The EPMD Tape
Biggie once said in an interview that in his pre-Bad Boy Records days, he had once recorded an hour long casette tape of him freestyling over EPMD beats. Given that Biggie was signed to Bad Boy Records in 1993, those EPMD instrumentals would have likely been from the early 90s. Unfortunately that tape has never been found.
The Uptown Records Demo Tape
Another super rare tape. According to sources, there may have been 100 of these tapes made back in 1993, or maybe way less than that. About a handful have popped up on Ebay in the last decade, so we can’t imagine any more than 10 or 15 of these still laying around. An interesting thing to note about this one is “Hot Butter Soul” is listed as a track. Meaning that this demo tape was actually recorded before “Warning” was named as the official track.
The Unreleased DAT Tape
This one we just saw this year as Notorious BIG producer Rashad Smith posted in on Instagram. We have never seen this one before and so far after digging around online and asking people in the know, no one has any information on this track. Based on it’s date, we are assuming (possibly incorrectly) that this was for Born Again or another Bad Boy Records projects from around that time. Rashad has mentioned that the track will be released (or maybe leaked) sometime in the future, so we do have fingers crossed that we can finally hear this unreleased gem. If anyone reading this can put their detective skills to work and can figure out where this track is from, please holler!
The Original Original Demo Tape
We wrote the word original twice on purpose for this one. Everyone is aware of Biggie’s famous demo tape, of which has been released on the Notorious soundtrack, but did you know there was an earlier demo tape that Biggie recorded? The tape was titled “The OGB 50 Grand Demo Tape”. Biggie’s original DJ 50 Grand has said that he still has everything that he recorded with Biggie, so it’s very possible that he’s the only one with this original original demo tape. One of Biggie’s homeboys did say he did have this tape but lost it in a fire.
The Ready To Die Original
There are two versions of the Ready To Die Original. One of them was the version that Biggie was dubbing himself in his mother’s house and handing them out to people walking around the neighborhood. Those hand made tapes were done on blank cassette tapes and the other version was recorded in the studio at The Hit Factory. Obviously both are crazy rare, but we did find one collector online who had an original home made cassette tape. We tried pestering him for him to sell it, but he politely (sarcasm) told us he wasnt interested. On discogs there is a product listing for the actual Bad Boy Records original Ready To Die from the Hit Factory, we have just never actually seen one for sale.