Unbreakable: We break down the Notorious B.I.G.’s rap verse on Invincible’s first track.
A defiant lyric that epitomizes peerlessness & immortality is Michael Jackson’s clapback to detractors.
“Don’t you ever make no mistake, baby, I’ve got what it takes.”
With those edgy lyrics, Michael Jackson opens the bridge on ‘Unbreakable’, the hard-hitting opening track on his tenth studio album, Invincible.
And, ‘what does it take’? Resilience.
In a career with no peer, spanning all of a half-century, and still standing, in spite of many libelous atrocities and the normalization of slander against pop’s biggest icon, ‘Unbreakable’ is Jackson’s last word to his detractors.
And he delivers it with pomp and bombast.
‘Unbreakable’ opens with a punchy, paced, recurrent chugg, sandwiched between looped drumbeats. This Darkchild signature is subsequently overlaid by a sonorous synth that swoops down into the verse, then shuts off for Michael to launch his first volley.
From the opening verse, Michael descends to the bridge, and then soars to a rap space, where Rap King the Notorious B.I.G. intervenes. And, Biggie delivers a poetic punch, lyrical assassin style, to smash Jackson’s adversaries to pieces and smear their fallen faces with the album’s message.
Biggie’s rap is a short verse, just 40 seconds long.
What it economizes in length, it embellishes in metaphor.
The message pf its 16 sentence-stanza can be summarized by just 3 themes.
Largeness, Peerlessness, and Immortality.
To break it down, Biggie raps about excess luxury as a metaphor to show that Jackson has achieved an enviable peak of success and lives in unsurpassable excellence.
In typical hip-hop style, this comes across as “largeness.”
He then rhymes on about peerlessness, and scoffs on Jackson’s behalf at those who compare themselves to him, or their achievements to his.
In typical hip-hop style, this comes across as “bragging rights.”
Biggie ends with a deft take on immortality, with a slick metaphor about the grave, how even at that final stage, the adornments of his (Michael’s) grave are still much better than theirs.
Again, in typical hip-hop style, this comes across as “untouchable.”
To summarize this rap, you could probably say Biggie was wildin’.
In hip-hop slang, that means he was really showing off and showing out. The lyrics are an unabashed display of excess, and an unbridled celebration of prominence, and that’s just what Jackson wanted them to be.
Thematically, the entire Invincible album is a comeback.
And like ‘Unbreakable’ itself argues in its 2nd verse: “you can’t stop me, even though you think, that if you block me, you’ve done your thing .” Defiance is what this song is about, and boasting is its avowed style, a lyrical finger in your face, or in the faces of those who wanted Michael Jackson down and out, but instead, he’s survived everything that was thrown against him, and now, they “can’t believe it, cos he’s unbreakable”.
Let’s take a deep dive into the metaphorical rap verse on ‘Unbreakable’, as delivered by the Notorious B.I.G.
A lime to a lemon
Straight up, without missing a beat, Biggie dives into a comparison.
Even though they have one or two things in common, a lime is not a lemon, and that’s it. Next.
My DC women
Bringing in 10 G minimums
to condos with elevators in ‘em
Vehicles with televisions in ‘em
Watch they entourage turn yours to just mirages.
Yup. This one is about money. I have money, and 5 figures is my bare minimum, and I live in style.
Everything I have is bigger than yours: cars, houses too.
If you think you’re large, I’m larger.
Eat that. Next.
Disappearing acts, strictly .9's and MAC’s
Killers be serial, Copperfield material
My dreams is vivid, work hard to live it
Biggie speaks to the hard work Jackson has invested to lift himself to the apex.
He may be living large now, but none of that was free of charge, he earned it, and ditto his respect.
The rapper compares Jackson’s work ethic to a killer instinct that spares no effort, and cannot be understood by the uninitiated, because like magic, Jackson’s work is “Copperfield material”.
Any place I visit, I got land there
Using land as a metaphor for wealth, like a true hiphoponomist would. And it’s true, though Jackson was officially resident in California, he was a smart investor and owned property in other parts of the United States, in Europe and around the world.
How can players stand there
And say I sound like them? Hello?
Push wigs back and push six Coupes that’s yellow
Plus clips that expand from hand to elbow
Spray up your Day’s Inn, any ‘telly you in
Crack bragging, sick of bragging how my mink be dragging
Desert Eag’s, street sweeper beside the Beamer wagon
The message is simple. I’m not like you. And you’re nothing like me.
Not with so many upstart stars without the length, breadth or depth, and certainly not the range of the King of Pop, preposterously laying claim to being the next Michael Jackson.
It’s a popular sport, but it’s also wispy like smoke. They come, they go, but only one true king remains. And if you check the charts in 2021, 12 years after Jackson ascended with his ancestors, he’s still on top of several charts, still streaming and trending, because, “he’s unbreakable”.
Biggie elaborates on his (Jackson’s) unsurpassable superiority in a few more bars, using his fleet of cars, and jewelry, wardrobe, hotel suites and yes, top of the range artillery as metaphors for a life of luxury that is above and beyond.
I rely on Bed-Stuy
To shut it down if I die
Put that on my diamond bezel
You’re messing with the devil
What. (echo, to fade out)
The rap’s close-out might be its most impactful bars. Biggie alludes to immortality, and how even in death, Jackson is still superior to his enemies. The bevel is the name plate on a tomb stone, and according to Biggie’s verse, Jackson’s was going to be encrusted in diamonds.
On the one hand, an allusion to an eternal career, as hard to break as diamonds, and on the other hand, a soul that’s forever, like diamonds.
This year alone, Jackson has hit new records, his single releases topping newer formats like YouTube and Spotify, for streaming numbers. He remains the highest earning dead celebrity, besting Marilyn Monroe, Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
That’s why when Biggie raps “you’re messing with the devil”, he’s telling Jackson’s accusers they are taking on a challenge that’s bigger than them, referencing the proverbial immortality & invincibility of the devil. It’s like he’s saying, if you think you’re bad, I’m badder.
Likewise, Jackson himself makes an allusion to death and immortality, singing in the 2nd verse: “and when you bury me, underneath all your pain, I’m steady laughing, while surfacing”
Jackson knows what he’s doing: taunting.
And yes, “they hate it.”
They hated it so bad Sony was afraid to release ‘Unbreakable’ as the first single off the album, just one of several steps they took to whittle and water down the artist’s vision for the album and his personal style as its executive producer.
The “what, what, what” refrain that echoes to fade out the rap is reminiscent of Biggie bouncing off the set, with his back to his opponents, leaving them eating dust, with their mouths agape at a masterful telling off, for which no retort can suffice.
There’s no clapback to this comeback.
The Bed-Stuy in the rap verse is a contraction of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City, made famous by cultural icons such as NFL Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, Hiphopreneur Jay-Z, and not the least, Biggie himself.
Bed-Stuy is a lively place, and Biggie is saying there’ll be a party to literally ‘shut-down’ the block, even at his death. And in 2009, when Jackson himself passed, he actually shut down the internet, a rare effect previously associated with the downing of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center eight years earlier.
Biggie’s ‘Unbreakable’ rap is lifted from his duet with Shaquille o’Neal on ‘Can’t Stop The Reign’ (1996). In addition, the baseline is also sampled from another Biggie track, ‘Unbelievable’, from the Notorious B.I.G.’s debut studio album, Ready to Die (1994).
Interestingly, both Biggie and Shaq collaborated earlier with Michael Jackson on separate tracks, during his 1995 studio album, HIStory.
At the peak of Biggie’s notoriety, he appeared on ‘This Time Around’, from Jackson’s HIStory album (1995). Producer Dallas Austin describes how the two gentlemen first met, and that when Biggie got the call, like everybody else, he refused to believe it was the real Michael Jackson. And that when Biggie finally arrived in the studio, he nearly broke down in tears at the reality of working with an icon he had adored since he was a child. Biggie was tripping up on his words, bowing down and telling Michael how much his music had meant to him in his life. And while Biggie just went on and on how much he loved Michael, the King of Pop was, as always, very humble and kept smiling and saying he appreciated the Rap King too.
The recording session went well, and Biggie nailed his vocal delivery in one take.
No surprises then, that Jackson wanted Biggie back, though posthumously, for his 2001 album. According to producer Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins, even the short film for ‘Unbreakable’ would have featured a hologram of the Notorious B.I.G.
Jackson believed so much in the collaboration, that he moved for ‘Unbreakable’ to be released as the first single from the then upcoming album. But record company Sony declined, because obviously the song was too confrontational for them, being a barely veiled barb-fest reflecting the acrimony between the company and its top superstar. They opted to go with ‘You Rock My World’, and that’s the back story of how that mid- tempo dance track became the most popular track from the Invincible album. Maybe someday, the highly advanced script for a groundbreaking short film with special effects, developed for ‘Unbreakable’, will emerge from the vault, in one guise or another, among hundreds of other material that guarantee no end to Jackson’s musical genius and visual creativity, timeless traits which make him truly Unbreakable.
