If You Don't Know, Now You Know

Unbelievable book review...eventually

It's been seven years, and then some.

I got home, watched Derek Fisher and the Fishettes casually smack down the Wolves again, and decided once the game was in hand to open up my e-mail.

Nate sent me the one I cared about. Said to hit a link.

I'm going, going/back, back/to Cali, Cali

SEVEN YEARS. What really killed me about this, besides the tantalizing wingman prospects to say nothing of the Sunday night blowaway I'm trying to get my Scoobies to run with, is that I had literally finished Unbelievable: the Life, Death & Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G.; closed the book, opened up Hotmail. Nate didn't know, unless he's one of the 3 who pays hardcore attention to the sidebar. Nate, to my knowledge, hasn't been east of Colorado.

Nate is JEWISH.

And yet, he sends me an e-mail and it's not "Swinging back through" or "I HATH RETURNED!" but Christopher Wallace trying to wake up to catch Flight 504 out here and the song he listened to in his dying days and maybe even seconds. It's entirely possible I'm throwing too much psychic thought behind this and my boy Nate Dogg just wants to hear from Liz "Natey, Natey, Natey, give me one more chance."

But those who talk to me via AIM know of my psychic Winamp picking a song out of 32g+ that seems to fit what I think or talk about at any given time, and this is one of those. See, the thing is, Biggie couldn't've conceived of a Nate. And the chance to meet him was a hiccup and won't happen now.

That's what Biggie did. That's what he meant. And you get that feeling right away and through the near 350 pages. It's a great autobiography by a Vibe writer, and it's practically comprehensive to the point where you expect to see meals. Everything's in it: how he started off a cherubic two-lifed wiseass, the dealing, the 'Pac friendship, and how the LAPD more or less killed him for the ones of you who didn't read any of the excellent Rolling Stone or Los Angeles Times articles about Russell Poole getting cockblocked by his bosses.

But anyway. Those who don't know, but are willing to be intrigued will find a story uplifting, then depressing, but oddly familiar. Those who know, need to make like Sugar Hill and jump on it. In fact, here:

No excuses. Fourteen bucks.

From foreword to video and audiobiography, this isn't just a superlative biography, it's a great book, period, even if you can't tell Faith Evans from Faith Hill. So go already. Me, I'm going to listen to the beginning minute of the "Flava In Ya Ear" remix, wait for my own Lil' Cease to shuffle down here to set it off Sunday, and remember.

Ambient music: see last sentence