Just to get the fact out of the way, this’ll be the only track by The Notorious B.I.G. you’ll see on here. Not for a reason that I don’t like any other song that he did. It was more that I had to be stringent with the songs I used to add on my old phone ’cause of the storage space and all. After hearing more music after initially hearing Ready to Die in 2014 or so, there were just so many more songs I came across that I preferred to add rather than other cuts from the album. It’s not like I had to add ‘Big Poppa’ or ‘Juicy’. I can go on nights out and hear those songs anywhere. It’s been a while since I’ve gone through it from front to back, though. I should do that again someday. I’m sure quite a few would go straight to the Liked Songs playlist. But for 11 years now, Ready to Die‘s proper opener ‘Things Done Changed’ – coming after the scene-setting three-and-a-half minute intro – has been my highlight on there since that first time I heard it when I was in first year at university.

So I’ll try and tell you from my perspective what it was like to listen to this that first time. At the end of album intro, Biggie Smalls talks about how he has “big plans”, he chuckles, strings in the background leave this in a tense, unresolved note. And then ‘Things Done Changed’ comes in. An emphatic drum fill kicks the track off, falling into a soundscape of rising strings and horns. The chorus contains the sampled vocals of Biz Markie and Dr. Dre – the latter of which contains the source of the song’s title. It had the hook, it had the beat. All sounded good so far. But then Biggie started rapping. “Remember back in the daaaays when niggas had waaaves / Cazal shaaades and corn braaaids”. Just on that flow alone, I was all in. I couldn’t help but pay attention to his voice, it had such a presence about it. I was only a small, small child when Biggie passed and wasn’t around on this earth when Ready to Die was released, but it only took this song to make me see why people listened to him and still talked about him with the regard they did, particularly in 2014 when it was Ready to Die‘s 20th anniversary.

‘Things Done Changed’ sees Biggie put his storytelling skills at work immediately, as he compares the days (presumably of the ’70s/’80s when he was a young man) when people were friendly, having neighborhood barbecue parties in peace to those in 1993 (when the song was written) where it seems like everywhere you turn around people are getting and shot and getting into fights without a moment’s notice. It’s something that if a young kid’s parents shared the same sentiment, the kid probably wouldn’t care ’cause parents never know anything about anything. Biggie did know from first-hand experience and made his worries and feelings sound so engaging and thought-provoking in the process. He raps about how futile it is trying to fight using your hands like how it used to be, because everywhere you turn someone’ll have a gun on them to end that fight very quickly. And while all that’s happening on the streets, on top of that, he had to worry about his mother having breast cancer too. The track depicts a stressful time for everyone involved. It’s a great one. Such a strong way to open a debut album.