Intro
Biggie Smalls uses turntables and back spinning, created by producer Sean Combs, on his Ready to Die album, released September 13th, 1994, which influenced the east-coast gangster sound of rap while continuing a legacy of serious hard-hitting lyrics and percussion-based backbeats which can still be heard in similar hip hop styles today. Biggie Smalls’ style and break beats which he sampled, inspired sound engineers, like Prince Charles Alexander, to become involved in recording rap. Turntables were used starting as early as the 1940s and 50s, however the turntablism we know now was not popularized until the late ’80s and early ’90s. It is this later wave of turntablism that characterized the reign of Biggie Smalls. We will start our website with an overview of the technics used to use turntables as an instrument along with how the turntable was originally popularized. Then we will discuss the change in how turntables changed from a piece of equipment to play music to a musical instrument itself and discuss the transformation from live turntable DJs to recorded beats and rhythms used by rappers like Biggie Smalls for the background of his music. After the change in the use of turntables is discussed, we will give background information about Biggie Smalls and his life and personal influence on the hip-hop/rap genre. Further, the webpage will dive into a specific Biggie Smalls album called Ready to Die to see some specific turntable sounds in the East Coast Gangster rap style and the lyrical meaning of the songs within this album, along with the wide success of the album.