The Notorious B.I.G at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. Photo: Getty Images
It's December 1994, and the obese high school dropout surveys the chaotic Harlem scene. Cutting through the noise, he hears his own booming voice reverberate from passing cars as they cruise the strip. Shouts of acknowledgement pierce through the bass lines as the thick, easy rhymes of "Big Poppa" greet their maker. The usually sullen features of Christopher Wallace transform into a bellyaching laugh. As New York's hottest rap artist, under the double monikers Biggie Smalls and The Notorious B.I.G., he punches the air. He feels invincible. But as the icy dawn breaks and he climbs the stairs to his Brooklyn apartment, a familiar fear rises. Through narrowed eyes, he scours the street. In his bedroom, he feels under the mattress for his 9mm pistol. "I'm scared to death," he once confessed. "Scared of getting my brains blown out."
From a young age, Wallace, the only child of Jamaican immigrant and single mother Voletta, lived a double life. Growing up in Brooklyn in the late '80s and early '90s, he was exposed to the devastating drug epidemic that swept New York's black community. While his mother believed he could do no wrong, from the age of 12, "her Christopher" dealt crack cocaine and mixed with some of the meanest players in the 'hood.
Nicknamed "Big" due to his enormous size (he was 190cm tall and weighed about 140kg), Wallace could have easily succumbed to life as a small-time crim. Instead, his exposure to gritty inner-city living would become his platinum ticket out of the world that had shaped him. Ever since his mother bought him a "stereo radio box" – and he heard veteran rap artists like Run-DMC and LL Cool J
– Wallace spat rhymes with an easy, natural flow and increasing prowess on street corners. It was the electric combination of his larger-than-life persona and a knack for authentic, street-wise lyrics that would transform this Brooklyn no-hoper into rap's first cultural icon.
At a time when the US's West Coast artists dominated the hip-hop scene, Wallace "almost single-handedly shifted the focus back to East Coast rap", declared Rolling Stone magazine. But stepping with such a large footprint onto the rap scene would trigger a feud between East and West artists which – due to the volatility of the rivalry – was destined to end in bloodshed.
Born Christopher George Latore Wallace in Brooklyn on May 21, 1972, the rapper had no recollection of his father, George Latore, a welder, who left the family shortly after Christopher was born. His mother worked as a preschool teacher to pay for her son's education. According to Cheo Hodari Coker's biography, Unbelievable: The Life, Death, And Afterlife Of The Notorious B.I.G. (Three Rivers Press, $45), young Christopher – a bright student – repaid her by hiding a change of clothes on the roof of their apartment and playing truant from his Catholic private school.
Once he knew he could earn $700 a week dealing crack, he decided, "I didn't want no job. I wanted to sell drugs." It was only when he was arrested on weapons charges aged 17 and received five years probation that his mother knew the true extent of her son's secretive life. In 1991, he was arrested for dealing crack and spent nine months in jail.
What kept him afloat was his love of rap. In 1992, a demo tape under the alias Biggie Smalls – lifted from a gangster in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again – landed at The Source, known as "the Bible of hip-hop", and made the magazine's Unsigned Hype column. Within weeks, up-and-coming music executive/producer Sean "Puffy" Combs had signed Wallace to Uptown Records, which was managed by rap impresario Andre Harrell. "He sounded like no other human being I ever heard in my life,"" Combs later recalled.
Despite the buzz building around him, Wallace wouldn't stop dealing drugs – not even when his girlfriend, Jan Jackson, told him she was pregnant. In his song "Everyday Struggle", he lays it bare: "Pocket broke as hell/Another rock to sell … Baby on the way/Mad bills to pay." When Combs found out Wallace was dealing drugs, he gave the rapper an ultimatum, promising him an album deal if he quit his criminal ways.
In mid 1992, however, Harrell fired Combs from Uptown Records. Undeterred, the producer took Wallace – now calling himself The Notorious B.I.G. – and started his own label, Bad Boy Entertainment. For months, Wallace and his group, Junior M.A.F.I.A., worked in the studio. He vented his anger and pain – from the self-loathing of drug dealing to his mother's cancer diagnosis (she recovered) – into his music. "The way he worked,"" writes Coker, "was to smoke copious amounts of weed and listen to the beat, then walk to the booth and do the entire song off the top of his head."
By the time his debut album, Ready To Die, was released in September 1994, clubs and underground radio stations were pumping out Wallace's voice and his "gangsta" party anthems. Among black audiences he found sympathy with tracks like "Juicy" – about the power of music – and the darker "Suicidal Thoughts". "Mo Money Mo Problems" thrilled white suburban audiences with its allure of ghetto glamour, paving the way for Wallace to cross over from underground into mainstream. In the first week, the album sold 500,000 copies in the US.
By now, the rapper was a father to 13-month old T'yanna, had separated from her mother, Jan Jackson, and had become an unlikely sex symbol. In August 1994, Wallace married glamorous R&B singer Faith Evans, who was also signed to Bad Boy Entertainment, after meeting her at a photoshoot just weeks earlier. But as her husband's fame increased, so, too, did his philandering, meaning the relationship was always tempestuous.
With Wallace's star rising, it was inevitable he'd cross paths with infamous rap artist Tupac Shakur – known as 2Pac – whose hard-boiled lyrics about growing up in New York's ghettos had parallels with Wallace's own life. The first time they met, in early 1993, "they were, like, immediate friends", recalled Sybil Pennix, Combs's assistant at the time.
2Pac was always in trouble with the law, and despite a pending trial on sexual assault charges, he continued to record in the same Manhattan studios as Wallace. On November 30, 1994, the night before the court verdict, 2Pac was singled out by two men, shot five times and robbed of $40,000 worth of jewellery in the studio's lobby. Upstairs, Wallace and Combs were collaborating in another studio. 2Pac survived the attempt on his life, was found guilty of sexual abuse, and went to jail. Behind bars, he pointed the finger at Wallace and Combs, accusing them of being complicit in the shooting. Both denied it, but the damage was done.
By mid 1995, Wallace seemed unstoppable. He graced the cover of The Source with the caption "The King Of New York Takes Over". But on August 3, at the magazine's Hip-Hop Music Awards at Madison Square Garden, the simmering turf war with West Coast artists – led by rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg and his producer, Marion "Suge" Knight, CEO of Death Row Records – threatened to explode.
While Wallace scooped the awards – dubbed the Oscars of rap – Best New Artist, Best Live Performer, Best Lyricist and Best Album, the night was remembered for the words exchanged onstage. A machete-wielding Snoop stoked the flames by declaring, "Let it be known that we got no love for the East Coast." In an effort to douse the fire, veteran record producer Quincy Jones called a "peace summit" to discuss hip-hop's future.
As The Notorious B.I.G., Wallace seemed to be losing his grip on reality, as fame swelled his girth and he succumbed to easy temptation. These were the days of "ghetto fabulous": Cristal and Hennessy were on tap, plus "orgies – anything you wanted", recalled Wallace's friend and fellow rapper Lil' Cease.
Aside from the countless affairs, Wallace also was involved with Junior M.A.F.I.A. protégé Kimberly Jones, aka Lil' Kim, and Tiffany Lane, who would become known by the rap alias Charli Baltimore. With her husband constantly on tour, Evans was feeling the strain. On one occasion, she turned up at a hotel to surprise Wallace, only to find him in bed with another woman. Enraged, Evans pummelled the girl to the ground.
Wallace also began to feel professional pressure when Knight, of the West Coast's Death Row Records, paid 2Pac's hefty bail in return for a three-album deal with his label. The business rivalry between the East Coast's Combs and the West's Knight escalated into a bitter personal feud between Wallace and 2Pac. While Wallace didn't respond directly to 2Pac's angry public pronouncements, his song "Who Shot Ya?" fanned the war of words. Around this time, Evans met 2Pac in LA and sang on one of his songs. The rapper implied they'd done more than lay tracks together. In "Hit 'Em Up", 2Pac taunted, "You claim to be a player, but
I fucked your wife." Evans denied it and Wallace believed her, but their marriage was on the rocks. Although Evans later found out she was pregnant with Wallace's child, the couple still agreed to separate.
On September 7, 1996, following a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas, 2Pac was critically injured in a drive-by shooting. He died in hospital six days later. In the ensuing media frenzy, the Los Angeles Times accused Wallace and his crew of involvement in the murder and linked them with the notorious LA Crips street gang. It was common knowledge that Knight had ties to the rival Bloods gang.
Whatever the case, 2Pac's death frightened Wallace. Over the next few months, his life spiralled out of control and he was charged with assault, as well as possession of marijuana and guns. It was the birth of Christopher Jordan "CJ" Wallace, on October 29, 1996, that forced him to slow down. The events of the previous year caused Wallace to focus on his "peace of mind". He said: "My mom, my son, my daughter, my family and my friends are what matter to me now."
If his first album, Ready To Die, was about surviving street life, his second, Life After Death, was about surviving success. In an eerily prophetic sign of what was to come, Wallace was photographed standing next to a hearse on the cover of Life After Death.
On March 9, 1997, Wallace and Combs were among the last to leave a VIBE magazine party in LA. As the rapper relaxed in the passenger seat of a four-wheel drive (Combs had left in a separate vehicle), he turned to see a car pull alongside. The driver rolled down his window. Before Wallace could react, a succession of shots rang out. Four bullets struck him in the chest and, although his entourage rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Wallace was pronounced dead within an hour. He was 24 years old.
Thousands gathered in Brooklyn for his funeral. At a private ceremony attended by friends and family, Wallace was laid out in state, the casket open. Dressed in a white, double-breasted suit with a matching hat, he looked peaceful. As the who's who of rap – from Dr. Dre to Mary J Blige and Lil' Kim – queued to pay their respects, Combs broke down when Wallace's four-month-old son, Christopher Jr, was held up to the coffin and smiled as he touched his father's face. Afterwards, a motorcade wound its way through Brooklyn, the streets lined with sobbing fans and old-time hustlers. When the cavalcade had passed, a wave of anger and grief swept the crowd. Then, as if on cue, the beat from Biggie's "Hypnotize" boomed from a speaker and the fans went crazy, dancing on cars, screaming and gyrating, until the police waded in, dispersing the crowds with capsicum spray.
Today, his slaying remains unsolved. Many fans believe his death was in retaliation for 2Pac's murder. His mother, Voletta, has filed two wrongful death lawsuits against the city of LA, accusing the police of a cover-up. After the first was declared a mistrial in 2005, a second investigation was reopened a year later. Despite countless delays, Voletta still believes justice will be done and says she "can't rest" until her son's killers have been brought to justice.
Yet The Notorious B.I.G. lives on. Life After Death has sold more than 10 million copies and the posthumous album, Born Again, has sold three million since its release in 1999. Earlier this year, a biopic, Notorious, opened in cinemas, grossing more than $40 million at the US box office alone. In an indication that tensions still run deep, one fan opened fire on another at the film's opening night at a theatre in North Carolina. No doubt Wallace would have seen the chilling irony in this as he did, all too eerily, on his final track on Life After Death – "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)".
1 Comment
B.I.G. - still missed today!