In celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, Warner Music Group’s creative content arm WMX is releasing a new visual podcast series exploring “albums that defined a generation”, with the first season exploring the legacy of The Notorious B.I.G.’s second and final studio album, Life After Death.
The eight-part weekly series, titled Iconic Albums, is hosted by rapper and radio personality Angie Martinez. She will explore the album’s cultural impact and Christoper ‘Biggie’ Wallace’s final 18 months through first-hand accounts and untold stories from people who knew him at the time, including fellow artists Lil Cease, Fat Joe, Pusha T, Rick Ross and Too $hort.
“Biggie was, and still is, one of the most important artists of our lifetime and Life After Death is a masterpiece!” said Martinez. “To collaborate with WMX on this series has been an incredible experience. It’s especially meaningful as we also pay homage to 50 years of hip-hop and how it’s changed the course of history.”
“The Notorious B.I.G. is a once-in-a-lifetime talent,” said Wallace’s former manager Wayne Barrow. “His work has been examined and reviewed before, but this series provides new stories and firsthand accounts by the people that were there. It’s something special.”
Martinez is also the show’s executive producer alongside Warner Music Group vice president of content development and production Kevin Hofman, and the series is directed by screenwriter Bonsu Thompson, in collaboration with the Estate of Christopher Wallace.
The debut season of Iconic Albums will premiere in the US on 29 April exclusively on the new WMX Hip-Hop channel available on The Roku Channel. It will then be distributed globally, with video available to watch on The Notorious B.I.G. YouTube channel and audio available to download and listen to across all podcast platforms.
“We’re excited to be able to share stories about the albums that have shaped entire generations so profoundly – beginning with Biggie’s Life After Death,” said WMX media and creative content president Ben Blank. “The launch of Iconic Records embraces the huge appetite and need for unique content tailored for genre-specific audiences. WMX lives at a crossroads where artists, content and experiences converge to reach music fans where they are, and this exciting series is the first of many forums in which we will continue to tell the stories about the art that shapes and inspires our culture.”
Warner Music Group launched an in-house podcast network called Interval Presents in April 2022 to create multi-form audio content which is” at the intersection of music, pop culture, and social impact”. Its first slate of podcast series included celebrity names such as Academy award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o and music artist Jason Derulo.
The network also acquired a number of podcasts such as weekly hip-hop podcast Drink Champs, hosted by former rapper N.O.R.E and DJ EFN, hip hop podcast Rap Radar, and news podcast Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams.
