Oftentimes, many people didn’t know if he was paying attention or not, but he’d be in a zone that would last for hours listening to the same beat. Studio time wasn’t cheap, so spending marathon sessions in there would create feelings of anxiousness or impatience. All that would fly out the window when Big would stand up, go into the booth, put headphones on, and knock an entire song with ease.
Watching Big record was both sublime and, if you weren’t prepared for just how vulgar he could be, cringeworthy. Take Big in the booth recording the song “Ready to Die”—the very first song they laid on wax for the forthcoming album at the Soundtrack recording studio circa 1993. The process was what it always came to be for Mo Bee. The beat was on loop, and Big went through his usual routine of mumbling, smoking weed, zoning out, and looking like he was under hypnosis of some kind. And when he was ready, he hopped in the booth and spit the verses off the top of his head. Oftentimes in one take, too.
The harsh lyrics were no surprise to Mo Bee. This was hip-hop, after all. But even he had a limit. In the booth, Wallace delivered a lyrical dismount that, to this day, still hits with the force of a Mike Tyson right hook: “Fuck the world, my moms and my girl / My life is played out like a Jheri curl / I’m ready to die.”
Mo Bee was stupefied. He couldn’t believe what he just heard.
“Big, you know what you just said?” a visibly perturbed Mo Bee asked.
Big just took his headphones off and shrugged. It wasn’t anything shocking for him.
“Yo, I’m not ready to die. That’s just like an extension of how I feel. It’s serious for me right now,” he explained. “A nigga just be like, ‘Yo. Fuck! If I was dead, I wouldn’t have to worry about nothing. I could just lay up. Either I’d be in heaven or hell. I’d be laying the fuck up, chilling. I wouldn’t have to worry about no problems.’ ”
It was quite the unique perspective to have about mortality. But for Big, given everything going on in his life and what he’d experienced, it was, in its own way, logical. Mo Bee would have more moments like this. On “Gimme the Loot,” a standout on the album, Big had the idea of rhyming in two different voices representing two different characters with two different outlooks on how to operate in the streets. In his normal voice was Big himself, a more reasonable, if not hardened, dealer who had seen everything possible hustling. In a higher-pitched voice was his alter ego, a deranged, maniacal, and bloodthirsty young Brooklyn firecracker who would do any and everything for a dollar.