Diddy Once Said The Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘My Downfall’ Was Inspired by His Anger

Rapper The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1997 sophomore album Life After Death contained a wide range of emotions, from sadness to fury to joy. Biggie effortlessly tells stories in his lyrics, and on the D.M.C. collab “My Downfall,” his words are particularly stinging.

The Notorious B.I.G. recorded ‘My Downfall’ with D.M.C.

Those close to Biggie reflected on the creation “My Downfall,” and the Life After Death album as a whole, in a 2003 interview with XXL.

“[Producer] Carlos [Broady] had that track in Trinidad and the way Big rocked it, the beat sounds crazy because it sounds like a Jamaican beat on it,” producer Nashiem Myricks said. “That’s the way Big flowed on it. He didn’t count the snare or something. The way he purposefully flowed on it sounds like it was on three beats instead of four beats. Stevie [J.], he came in and did the overdubs and that sounded crazy. Puff got some vocalist in. Then I brought D.M.C. in to do the hook, ’cause Big wanted the hook to be ‘Pray and pray for my downfall.’ They wanted to get someone to scratch it. I got [DJ] Clue to scratch it but it didn’t sound right ’cause the record interfered with it. So I just got D.M.C. himself to come in and do the vocals.”

D.M.C., co-founder of the hip-hop group Run-D.M.C., said he was pulled into the process by Diddy.

“Diddy called me up and asked me to do this part. It was taken from Run-D.M.C.’s ‘Together Forever’ — the part where I said, ‘MCs have the gall, to pray and pray for my downfall,'” D.M.C. remembered. “At first I thought they wanted me to come there just so they could sample from the original record. But they were like, ‘Nah, D, we want you to do it over.’ When that record came out, it was the biggest thing in the world for me. It made me big as f***. It made me relevant to today’s kids. Everywhere I went, it was like, ‘Yo, D.M.C.’s on Big’s album.'”

Diddy said The Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘My Downfall’ was inspired by his anger

Biggie worked with a number of other writers on the song, including Diddy. According to the Bad Boy Records founder, the tone that Biggie was taking with his message in the song stemmed from Diddy’s own frustration.

“That was me. That was my anger,” Diddy said honestly. “I was angry about the whole situation and about everything that was going on in hip-hop surrounding us. There were people against us in my own area, a lot of people adding fuel to the fire. I felt like a lot of it had stemmed from jealousy and there were people really praying and hoping that we would get killed. There were rumors. You know there were rumors about ‘Big got shot’ or ‘Puff got shot’ floating around before anything really happened. People would be looking at us like, ‘Y’all really in some beef, but like really hoping that something would happen.’ So that’s why the song said ‘Pray for my downfall.’ That joint was blatant, that was like for everybody and everything and was a real emotional song.”

Biggie didn’t live to see ‘My Downfall’s release

Biggie continued working on Life After Death and prepared for the release of his highly-anticipated second album. But the Brooklyn-bred emcee wouldn’t live to see “My Downfall” and the rest of the album’s songs be released to the public. He was shot and killed in early March 1997 in Los Angeles, just two weeks before the release of Life After Death.