Released 25 years ago , Big L’s The Big Picture is a triumph of immutable technique. It’s also a consolation prize. A year and a half before it dropped, the rapper born Lamont Coleman was shot and killed only a week after he began the process of signing a deal with Roc-A-Fella Records. Prior to his death, he’d been one of New York’s most renowned underground wordsmiths — a spitter that literally had Nas “scared to death.” There was always a feeling he was one project away from combining elite rap pyrotechnics and crossover success. But his death meant it would stay that way. The Big Picture is proof of why it shouldn’t have.
Excavating recordings L had planned for his sophomore LP, his Flamboyant label co-partner, Rich King, acted as an instrument of Big L’s will. Here, L’s vocals were paired with both frequent collaborators, dream collaborators, and the most acclaimed boom bap producers in rap history. Having been the first producer to connect with L, it was only right Lord Finesse framed L’s track, “The Heist Revisited” in sinister funk. For “Platinum Plus,” DJ Premier alchemized a Stylistics soul sample into a luminous crime caper fit for L’s spurts of acrobatic barking. Meanwhile, for “Holdin’ It Down,” Pete Rock supplies L with foggy flutes for a Breezy ode to staying true — a throughline for a project that did the same for Big L.
It feels cliche to call The Big Picture a “labor of love,” so let’s say it’s a fulfillment of devoted purpose. Features from Big L’s D.I.T.C. crew members like Fat Joe, and producers like Lord Finesse ensured this LP was the diametrical opposite of typically porous posthumous LPs that litter the rap landscape. But it wasn’t just about crystallizing what was already there, or filling in the empty spaces with plausible features. The folks responsible for finishing Big L’s LP also looked to complete his wishlist. Remembering that L was a 2Pac fan, DJ Ron G pulled from his underground 1995 mixtape cut, “The Heat,” to complete “Deadly Combination.” Big L had been a fan of Big Daddy Kane, so it’s no coincidence that the OG landed on a track like “Platinum Plus,” wherein the two trade staccato rhymes, fluid flexes, and chemistry that felt as preternatural as L’s verbal kinesthesia.
Big L’s agility is on display on every track, but perhaps never more apparent than on tracks like the radio rip, “‘98 Freestyle.” Here, he flaunts some alchemical word restructuring that would make Eminem blush; rhyming “city cops” with “idiots” is only possible if you see the English language as a puzzle you can’t walk away from. If you were born between 1989 and 1996, his Beavis & Butthead punchline was an iPod rewindable that proved you’d just discovered the most clever rapper who ever lived; a secret that never deserved to be kept.
Big L began leaking that knowledge with his 1995 debut, Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous, but, ironically, it all spilled out on The Big Picture, with “Ebonics” being the biggest single of his career. Operating as a one-man cultural translator, Big L the anthropologist popped out for a singular exercise in flow dexterity, concision, and rhyme economy. As nimble as it was incisive, it was further proof of a superstar in waiting; a spitter who rapped with slang and creative verve that makes us wish he never stopped speaking it.
