Kick in the Door - 2008 Remaster

"Kick in the Door" is the Notorious B.I.G. calling out his rap competition and declaring himself the King of New York. In the chorus, he talks about kicking in a door and assaulting his competition. It was included on his album Life After Death, released shortly after he was shot and killed on March 9, 1997.

Looking at the lyrics and knowing that B.I.G. was gunned down before this was ever released, it's easy to take the song too seriously as a violent callout. That doesn't really seem to be the intent, though. The song starts with a humorous mock call-in to Bad Boy Television (Bad Boy was B.I.G.'s record label) from "Shay from New Rochelle." She asks the host (played by the Madd Rapper - Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie) why he's so angry, and he responds with a profane rant about how his albums aren't selling. It was part of hip-hop culture at the time to do these sorts of seemingly violent songs, but they were meant with a sense of humor, even if that humor was more edgy than most are used to. The deaths of B.I.G. and Tupac took a lot of the humor out of it.

The line, "Disrespectful views on the King of NY" references Nas' song "The Message," which was released on his album It Was Written the year before. In that song Nas sings, "There's one life, one love, so there can only be one King." In 2003, Puff Daddy told XXL, "Part of the song was meant for Nas but it wasn't no real disrespectful s--t, it was more like some subliminal mixtape s--t. Nas was doing it. Wu-Tang was sayin' s--t on tapes. We were all sayin' subliminal s--t on tape, but it wasn't to the point where, when we saw each other, we couldn't give each other a pound and know that some s--t was said. It wasn't like no deep s--t."