The new Biggie album

So this morning I copped the new Biggie greatest hits album. Not that I needed it or anything; like any self-respecting fan of hip-hop before it began to suck balls, I've got both of Biggie's albums on CD in a box somewhere.

I haven't listened to either of them in ages, but if I really needed to hear, say, "Hypnotize," I could just spend half the day looking for my copy of Life After Death - or, more likely, just cop it on MP3 from the Internets the same way I just copped this greatest hits bullshit.

I don't have either of Biggie's posthumous albums, 1999's Born Again and 2005's Duets, but of course I'd never want to listen to anything from either of them other than maybe "Dead Wrong." Indeed one of the problems with Greatest Hits is that it includes quite a few tracks from these albums.

"Dead Wrong" is here, but so is the Duran Duran-sampling "Notorious B.I.G." from Born Again and Jazze Pha's "Nasty Girl" from Duets. Granted, those are two of the better-executed of the numerous Biggie corpse rapings, but obviously that's not saying a whole lot.

Then there's also the two "new" bonus tracks: a version of the original, gullier "One More Chance" with a guest rap by Ja Rule and Ralph Tresvant on the chorus, and some shit called "Running Your Mouth" with Fabolous, Nate Dogg, Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes.

I'm surprised es-curl hasn't put both of the new tracks up in the Bangers section yet, but you know how XXL is. The TIs at Warner Brothers probably don't want anyone to hear how they sound until the after the album is released next week.

Fortunately, both of the new tracks are available to stream elsewhere:

Notorious B.I.G. ft. Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Fabolous & Busta Rhymes - "Running Your Mouth"

Notorious B.I.G. ft. Ja Rule & Ralph Tresvant - "Want That Old Thing Back"

I'd be lying if I said I knew where the verse from "Running Your Mouth" is from, but it is kinda gully. I'd love to hear it the way it was originally recorded, rather than cut and pasted into the middle of some shitty new Fabolous record.

"Want that Old Thing Back," the new version of the original "One More Chance" is just wrong. How in the world it could have occurred to Diddy that anyone would want to hear Ja Rule and Ralph Tresvant on anything, let alone Biggie's greatest hits album is beyond me.

Otherwise, Greatest Hits is a decent-enough collection of Biggie records, but here's the thing: most of us have heard these songs a million times before. And even if you haven't, you'd probably just be better off copping those first two albums and being more or less done with it.