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FADER founder Rob Stone, who previously worked at Arista Records and helped to promote The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ready to Die" album recently penned a great article reminiscing about time spent with Biggie during the marketing of "Ready to Die." A worthy read.

Here's a small teaser:

We’d been running around all day like lunatics and back at the hotel, no one showed up for a midnight run to the radio station, except Big. So I went from miserable to HOLY S*** very quickly. It was pouring outside, so I ran to pull the car around and pick Big up in front—not that he requested it, but he had a way of making you want to do right by him. Because it was just us, we talked about a lot of things: our families, our moms, friends, girls, the business, Puff. He was curious about my life growing up in Long Island—how I’d gotten into hip-hop and proud to hear that I was born in Brooklyn and impressed that my dad went to Erasmus High School and still owned a trucking company in Brooklyn. He talked about recording his new album in the Caribbean, away from everyone. Things were getting complicated with way too many distractions. And he made a point to say, “I can’t front: Puff made Ready To Die great, and he’s gotta be there with me.” I asked how and he said Puff was the one who told him to paint the picture and tell stories. He’d designed tracks to fit Big’s style. It was pretty amazing to hear and to be let in on what felt like a secret.

In the article, Stone mentions that he was one of the few allowed to listen to "Ready to Die" early on and that he was trusted with an unmastered cassette tape of the album that featured "two dramatically different songs." On Twitter, I asked him what these records were and he was kind enough to respond. They were "Come On" and "Respect."