There are a few non-Biggie voices on Ready To Die. Best to leave Ready To Die alone, to let it be great. I have a hard time believing that any extra song, even that song, could make it better. It is as close to full-length perfection as rap music has ever come. Ready To Die is, for my money, the best rap album ever made. As much as I want to hear that hypothetical collab - and I would punch a puppy in the eye to hear it - it’s honestly better that the song never had a chance to exist. He wanted Ready To Die to have a slick, populist sense of focus to it, and that’s exactly what it had. And here’s what kills me: Puffy was right. But Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs vetoed the plan. If he’d been on a track with those guys together, he would’ve had to be both at the same time, and he could’ve done it. Biggie could be as raw and rugged as M.O.P., and he could be as intense and cerebral as Jeru. Imagine if he was on a track with three guys who knew that Premier sound inside and out. And Biggie could do no wrong during those Ready To Die sessions. Premier’s creative peak coincided exactly with Biggie’s all-too-brief career. Can you even imagine what that would sound like? How fucking incredible that would’ve been? There are precious few Biggie/Premier collabs, but every last one of them is a solid-gold classic. Word around the campfire is that Biggie Smalls, when he was recording Ready To Die, wanted to record a track with DJ Premier and M.O.P.