Biggie's classic sophomore LP Life After Death just turned 20 years old. The anniversary has seen many people for whom the record was important to looking back on its influence, including one man who was directly involved in its creation -- Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs.
In an interview with Revolt, Diddy spoke of a large stretch of time between Biggie's seminal debut Ready To Die and the follow-up where the Brooklyn emcee was having trouble getting inspired.
"A lot of people don’t know that BIG stopped working for a while. He had a writer’s block -- an idea block," said Puff. "It lasted like six, seven months. We kept it kinda quiet. And during that time he started getting in trouble, got into a car accident. A whole bunch of stuff was just not going in the right direction ... He started kind of really believing in the hype and wasn’t really focused on the second album."
According to Diddy, the turning point came when he was forced to turn his focus to other artists. "I think Big got over the writer’s block when I started doing other things," he said, speaking of his "famous trip" to Trinidad where he a made a large selection of records. "I started to the Mary remix album, The LOX, Mase ... I had to wake him up ... as far as it was time to get back in the game."
Watch another clip from Revolt's Life After Death: Reflections by Diddy, in which Puff speaks on he and Biggie's interactions with Prince, below. Read our Classic Rotation feature on The Notorious B.I.G.'s sprawling second album here.