"He will make you a star." Biggie was particularly concerned about money around that time because he became a father in August to T'yanna, his daughter, with high-school sweetheart, Jan. "Nah, stay with Puff," Tupac apparently said. After that, Tupac mentored Biggie whenever the two met up - at one point Biggie even asked if Tupac would become his manager. They ate, drank and smoked together, and Tupac, already a successful recording artist, gifted Biggie, then unknown outside New York, a bottle of Hennessy. Their encounter, detailed in Ben Westhoff's book, Original Gangstas, took place at a party held by an L.A. That same year, as he worked on music for his debut album, Biggie Smalls met Tupac for the first time. In June 1993, the label released The Notorious BIG's first single as a solo artist, "Party and Bullshit." Friendship With Tupac (He had been forced to change his recording name after a lawsuit though he continued to be widely known as Biggie). Blige's "Real Love" in August 1992 that featured a guest verse from The Notorious B.I.G. Combs went on to set up his own imprint, Bad Boy Records, and by mid-1992 Biggie had joined him.īefore he had the chance to put anything out on Bad Boy, Uptown released music that Biggie recorded during his brief stint at the label, including a remix of Mary J. Combs arranged a record deal for Biggie, but left the label soon after, having fallen out with his boss, Andre Harrell. This recording came to the attention of Sean "Puffy" Combs, an A&R executive and producer who worked for the leading urban label Uptown Records - he started there as an intern in 1990. He had no serious plans to pursue a career in music - "It was fun just hearing myself on tape over beats," he later said in an Arista Records biography - but the tape found its way to The Source magazine, who were so impressed that they profiled Biggie in their Unsigned Hype column in March 1992 from there, Biggie was invited to record with other unsigned rappers. After he got out of jail, he made a demo tape as Biggie Smalls - named after a gang leader from the 1975 movie Let's Do It Again also a nod to his childhood nickname. Scott "Zimer" Zimmerman and Naoufal ’Rocko’ Alaoui’s mural of Biggie Smalls in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Imagesīiggie began rapping as a teenager to entertain people in his neighborhood. The year after that, he was charged with dealing cocaine in North Carolina and reportedly spent nine months in jail while waiting to make bail. The following year he was arrested for violating that probation. He received a five-year probationary sentence in 1989 after being arrested on weapons possession charges. Biggie stepped up the drug dealing after quitting school and was soon in trouble with the law. Voletta worked long hours and had no inkling of her son's activities. Biggie had excelled at English, but often played truant at Westinghouse and dropped out altogether in 1989 at age 17.Īcquiring the childhood nickname "Big" because of his plus-sized girth, he began selling drugs at 12, according to an interview he gave to the New York Times in 1994, working the streets near his mom's apartment on St. But Biggie subsequently transferred to the George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School alumni include the rappers DMX, Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes. Selwyn left the family when Biggie was two, but Voletta worked two jobs in order to send her son to a private school - the Roman Catholic Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School alumni include Rudy Giuliani and former Primark CEO Arthur Ryan. His parents both hailed from the Caribbean island of Jamaica - his mom, Voletta taught preschool his pop, Selwyn, was a welder and local Jamaican politician. Early LifeĬhristopher George Latore Wallace was born on May 21, 1972, in Brooklyn, New York. In this regard, he was similar to Tupac Shakur, his one-time friend turned bitter rival - a contest that spiraled horrifyingly out of control leaving neither man alive to tell the tale. He styled himself as a gangster and although he was no angel, in reality he was more of a performer than a hardened criminal. With his clear, powerful baritone, effortless flow on the mic and willingness to address the vulnerability, as well as the harshness, of the hustler lifestyle, Smalls swung the spotlight back towards New York and his label home, Bad Boy Records. Smalls was from New York and had almost single-handedly reinvented East Coast hip hop - overtaken in the early 1990s by the West Coast "g-funk" sound of Dr. He was 24 years old when he was gunned down in 1997 in Los Angeles, a murder that has never been solved. Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G., lived a short life.
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