The hugely influential Harlem rapper Big L was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1999. He was 24 when he lost his life, which means he's been dead for longer than he was ever alive. Big L never found stardom in his lifetime, but he's been a cult hero ever since his passing. His posthumous album The Big Picture came out in 2000 and went gold. Since then, we've gotten two more posthumous albums, and we're about to get another one as part of Mass Appeal's Legend Has It... series. The new LP Harlem's Finest: Return OF The King comes out on Halloween, and it'll feature a rare appearance from Big L's friend Jay-Z.
If you were wondering whether Big L could possibly still have any music left unreleased all this time after his death, you are not being paranoid. As far as we know, there's no remaining treasure trove of completed and unreleased songs from Big L, a man who only had time to release one album during his lifetime. But the man did leave behind a ton of radio freestyles that have been widely bootlegged but never properly released. There is, for instance, the legendary seven-minute freestyle that Big L and Jay-Z did on The Stretch & Bobbito Show in 1995. It seems like some of those freestyles have been repurposed for Harlem's Finest.
Big L's estate is credited as executive producer on Harlem's Finest, as Royce Da 5'9" and Mike "Heron" Herard are its associate producers. We don't have a tracklist yet, but we know that Nas and Jay-Z are among its guests. The lead single is "u aint gotta chance," which is sort of new and sort of not. The production is new, and so is the Nas verse, a technical display that unfortunately starts Nas telling us that he's the first in rap to form a venture cap. Big L's verse, meanwhile, comes from a Tim Westwood freestyle that Big L and fellow DITC member O.C. did in 1997. The song definitely does not feel wholly organic, but it does give a nice snapshot of Big L's punchline-centric style. Listen below.
Harlem's Finest: Return OF The King is out 10/31 on Mass Appeal.
