With most people, collecting only one copy of an item is fine and good enough for them. In most cases, there are others who take it to the next level to find different variations of the same material. Personally, as a music collector, it is a must to have a complete collection.
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| "If you don't know, now you know ni**a" - The Notorious B.I.G. Can you spot the difference? |
Some history on READY TO DIE before we go on...
Originally released in 1994, The Notorious B.I.G was ready to take over the world. Puff Daddy back then had a knack for talent and was smart enough to sign Christopher Wallace (aka The Notorious B.I.G) to his Bad Boy Records label. 2 CD's from Bad Boy came out that year, Craig Mack's Project: Funk Da World and The Notorious B.I.G's Ready To Die. While Craig Mack's album did okay, Biggies album was light years if not eons ahead lyrically and production wise and sold much better.
The album starts out with his birth, struggle, success and eventually ends with his death. It is a timeless classic that ANY hip-hop fan should not be without. Songs like Gimme The Loot, The What (feat. Method Man), Juicy, Big Poppa, and Unbelievable show his skill on the mic and show how raw hip-hop was back then. In fact, this is on my personal list of CD's to bring if there was a zombie apocalypse fight for survival type scenario or if I was stuck on an island.
Are there really 2 copies of the CD?
Well not necessarily, song wise yes. The album was re-released in 2004 to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the album. It was remastered with bonus tracks and packaged with a DVD of the videos that came out for this album, which look like ass and encoded badly. As a matter of fact, I do not have the remastered version and do not plan to own a copy due to the mishandling of the mastering and of course the bad quality DVD.
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| Left: Original US 1994 pressing Right: Re-press or Canadian Version (Circa 1995/1996)
Not a lot of
people may know this, but when the CD originally came out in 1994. The
first pressings had a matted CD print, and a red background for the CD
case. Now, it was only released this way in the US. Since we live in
Canada, we only had the a regular black CD case and an ink CD print.
Future re-presses in the US had the same scheme. In any case, most
collectors would prefer the first versions.
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| "I love it when you call me big poppa" |
Not at all, NC and I found the first press copy here in Winnipeg at Value Village. I've had the re-press copy since 1996 (I was 12 years old son!). But the first pressing may be only the first couple of hundred thousand, hip-hop back then wasn't based on sales and copies were pressed in low numbers. Based on what I remember correctly, when Biggie died they ended up pressing more copies of this album (hence the 2nd version which only had the black spine and ink CD print). Now, if anyone has the first pressing of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's E.1999 album first pressing, WITHOUT Tha Crossroads as a bonus track. I am VERY interested... and NC knows I'm looking for this one too.. LOL. If you have it give us an e-mail!
Happy Thrifting!
- d.cypher LP
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