Get the best deals on The Notorious B.I.G. Music Cassettes when you shop the largest online selection at eBay.com. Free shipping on many items Browse your favorite brands affordable prices. 1 Source For Breaking Music, Film, and TV Headlines Sotheby’s to Auction Off The Notorious B.I.G.’s King of New York Crown Also available are Tupac Shakur's teenage love letters. Aug 25, 2020 The iconic crown worn by the Notorious B.I.G. And love letters written by his arch-rival Tupac Shakur are among the main items up for sale at the first major hip-hop auction to be held at an. The Notorious B.I.G., Soundtrack: Bad Boys. Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, was born on May 21, 1972 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Jamaican parents, Voletta Wallace, a pre-school teacher, and George Latore, a welder and small-time. Aug 25, 2020 Music, Film, TV and Political News Coverage. Tupac Shakur’s teenage love letters and the Notorious B.I.G.’s “King of New York” crown are two of the top lots up for sale at the first.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/TheNotoriousBIG
Go To Velocidoc for mac.
Mr. Smalls, dressed in his typically modest fashion.
'This album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothin', to all the people that lived above the buildings that I was hustlin' in front of that called the police on me when I was just tryin' to make some money to feed my daughters, and all the niggas in the struggle, you know what I'm sayin'? It's all good baby baby..'
Advertisement:
Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 - March 9, 1997), known by several stage names such as Biggie Smalls,note The Black Frank White,note and Big Poppa, but most prominently by The Notorious B.I.G., was an American rapper. 'B.I.G.' and 'Biggie' were rather apt names, as he stood at 6'3' and weighed between 300 and 380 pounds.
After a childhood of crime caught up with him, Wallace decided to focus on his other talent: Rapping, under the name Biggie Smalls. This lead to a chain of events that resulted in him teaming up with Uptown Records A&R and record producer Sean 'Puffy' Combs. However, soon after signing the contract, Combs found himself fired from Uptown and started up a new label, Bad Boy Records, which Wallace quickly became a part. Later that year, Wallace gained exposure on a remix to Mary J. Blige's 'Real Love,' but later found out that his original pseudonym Biggie Smalls was already in use, so he adapted a new moniker: The Notorious B.I.G. (the letters stood for Business Instead of Game).
Advertisement:
After more successful appearances on hit songs (and his solo track 'Party and Bullshit' appearing on the Who's The Man? soundtrack), and a marriage to singer Faith Evans just nine days after meeting her at a Bad Boy photoshoot, Wallace released his first album: Ready to Die. The album was a success, reaching #13 on the Billboard 200 chart and was very well received by critics and listeners alike, to the point that it's considered one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time.
Unfortunately, Wallace became involved in the infamous West Coast/East Coast hip-hop quarrel. In 1994, Tupac Shakur, his former friend and associate, believed that Wallace, Combs and Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell, had prior knowledge of a robbery in the same recording studio that Wallace and his entourage were in at the time of the incident that resulted in Shakur being shot repeatedly and losing thousands in jewelry. While they denied the accusations, Shakur signed onto Death Row Records in 1995, and Bad Boy Records and Death Row, now business rivals, became involved in an intense feud. Recording of Wallace's second album began in September 1995, although the 18-month process was frequently interrupted by not only the highly publicized dispute he was tangled up in, but injury and legal trouble, stemming from charges of second-degree harassment and possession of weapons and drugs. Imo for mac.
Advertisement:
On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot multiple times in Las Vegas in a drive-by shooting. Six days later, he perished due to complications from the gunshot wounds. Almost immediately fingers were pointed in Wallace's direction, which he denied, claiming that he was in New York at the time. An anti-violence hip-hop summit was held in the wake of Shakur's death.
Other than the birth of his first son, things didn't get much better from there. Wallace was involved in a car accident during the recording sessions for his second album that shattered his left leg and forced him to use a cane. And on top of that, he faced criminal assault charges and was forced to pay $41,000 after a friend of a concert promoter claimed to have been robbed and beaten up by Wallace and his entourage in May of 1995. The incident remains unsolved to this day, but all robbery charges were dropped. After this chain of events, Wallace declared that he wished to focus on 'peace of mind' and his friends and family.
In 1997, Wallace traveled to California to promote his upcoming album. Unfortunately, on March 9, just fifteen days before said album was to be released, he was murdered in a drive-by shooting. The shooter remains unknown - as with the murder of Tupac, fingers have been pointed in all directions, but to this day no one really knows who did it. He was 24.
A movie about his life, Notorious, was released in 2009, starring rapper Jamal 'Gravy' Woolard as the Notorious One himself. Woolard reprised his role as Biggie eight years later in the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me.
Not to be confused with the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name, not even for a minute.
Studio Albums:
- Ready to Die (1994)
- Life After Death (1997)
Posthumous Albums:
- Born Again (1999)
- Duets: The Final Chapter (2005)
- The King & I (2017, a Posthumous Collaboration with his widow, Faith Evans)
'Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can't you see?/Sometimes your tropes just hypnotize me':
- Anti-Love Song: 'Me & My Bitch' is a rap version of this.
- Batman Gambit: How Biggie escapes the predicament he gets into in 'I Got A Story to Tell.' He changes what the situation looks like and counts on everyone else acting the way he thinks they will.
- Betty and Veronica: His well-publicized Love Triangle between widow Faith Evans and Lil' Kim, whom he had known for years before marrying Evans.
- Biopic: Notorious, released in 2009. The film as a whole received mixed to positive reviews, but Jamal Woolward's performance was praised by nearly all who saw it.
- Bolivian Army Ending: 'Gimme The Loot' ends with the two robber protagonists engaging the police in a shootout. It's left ambiguous who won; we hear a voice (actually an Ice Cube sample) shouting 'Take that, motherfuckers!', but that could be from either side.
- The Commandments: 'Ten Crack Commandments'.
- Cool Shades: He wore them from time to time, such as his acceptance speech and several music videos.
- Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: 'Hypnotize'
- Dead Artists Are Better: He has been considered a solid contender for the greatest rapper of all time..after his death. With only two albums completed in his lifetime, to boot.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: 'Gimme the Loot' has this gem of a lyric.Biggie's Partner: Oh shit, the cops!
Biggie: Be cool, fool; they ain't gonna roll up! All they want is fucking donuts! - Downer Ending: 'Me and My Bitch' and 'Suicidal Thoughts'.
- Driven to Suicide: 'Suicidal Thoughts', a song about Biggie contemplating and finally committing suicide.
- Gangsta Rap: Specifically, types 2 and 4, though he sometimes ventured into type 3. ('Gimme The Loot', anyone? No? Well, how about 'Dead Wrong'?)
- Grand Finale: Subverted. True, Puff Daddy's 'Victory' is the last song he ever recorded before he died, but he certainly didn't intended for it to be his last song. However, as if he knew he was going to kick the bucket, he went hard on this song, to the point his first verse is considered one of the best verses in the history of hip-hop.Real sick, brawl nights, I perform like Mike/Anyone, Tyson, Jordan, Jackson
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Biggie and Puffy were best buds from day one.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Biggie was 6'4' and 300 Pounds. Lil' Kim was 4'11' and about 100 pounds.
- Inner Monologue - BIG argues with himself whether or not to rip off his own in men in the first verse of 'Niggas Bleed'.Think about it now, that's damn near one-point-five
I kill 'em all I'll be set for life, Frank pay attention.
These motherfuckers is henchmen, renegades.
If you die they still get paid, extra probably.
Fuck a robbery, I'm the boss.
Promise you won't rob 'em. I promise,
But of course you know I had my fingers crossed - List Song: 'The Ten Crack Commandments'. It originally included a sample of Chuck D counting to ten from the Public Enemy song 'Shut 'Em Down', but Chuck, who is both Straight Edge and heavily critical of drug dealing, was so incensed at being sampled in a song about drug dealing that he sued to have it removed.
- Mentor: To Junior M.A.F.I.A., including Lil' Kim. Sadly, this ended with Mentor Occupational Hazard.
- Mighty Glacier: Describes himself as this in 'Runnin' (Dying To Live)':Run from the police picture that, nigga I'm too fat.
I fuck around and catch a asthma attack.
That's why I bust back, it don't phase me.
When he drop, take his Glock, and I'm Swayze. - Non-Appearing Title: 'Juicy'. The title makes sense when you know that the song samples 'Juicy Fruit' by Mtume, but it doesn't appear anywhere in the song.
- Police Brutality: One of the allegations surfacing after the horrific LAPD Rampart scandal was that Biggie was murdered by cops.
- Rags to Riches: A popular subject of his songs; 'Juicy' and 'Sky's The Limit' come to mind.
- Rap Power Vacuum: Many cynical fans feel this is how Jay-Z rose to prominence after Biggie was killed.
- Remix Album: Duets: The Final Chapter. The tracks are made from previous and/or unreleased recordings combined with verses from other rappers to form duets.
- Sampling: In addition to the 'Ten Crack Commandments' debacle mentioned above, Ready to Die was pulled from shelves for a short while in 2004 due to a lawsuit about it sampling 'Singing in the Morning' by The Ohio Players without permission, but the matter was resolved quickly.
- Something Completely Different: 'Playa Hater' counts, as a laid-back R&B slow jam dropped right in the middle of a double album full of gangster rap.
- Take That!: While he rarely brought up names, several of his tracks had listeners wondering 'Did he just diss Nas? Was that aimed at 2Pac?'
- According to Nas himself on the song 'We Will Survive', their relationship was more of Friendly Rivalry than out-and-out conflict. Never Speak Ill of the Dead may be in effect in the song, however.
- Biggie and Raekwon and Ghostface Killah were not on the best of terms while Biggie was alive, partly because Raekwon accused Ready to Die of plagiarising the cover of Nas' Illmatic. Subliminal disses were traded back and forth on songs and album interludes as a result. For example, where Raekwon rhymes 'That's life, to top it all off, beef for whitenote / Pulling bleach out, trying to throw it in my eyesight.. Yo, what the fuck is on your mind?' in 'Ice Water', Biggie replies with 'Fuck that, why try? Throw bleach in your eye' in 'Kick in the Door'.
- Of course there's the famous beef between B.I.G. and his former friend turned enemy 2Pac. While B.I.G. said he always loved 'Pac, few can blame him for eventually dissing him in response to Shakur's numerous disses. And he did it twice. Once in Busta Rhymes' Jay Dee-Produced song The Ugliest, and this one was definitely a diss, to the point the song was unreleased. The second time is, however, more up to debate. It was in the Life After Death song Long Kiss Goodnight (likely recorded before 'Pac died, as Life After Death was originally supposed to be released in Halloween 1996). You had Lil' Cease saying he was totally dissing Shakur, then Puff Daddy saying it wasn't a diss song. You make your conclusions.
- Biggie and former labelmate Craig Mack had issues with each other from the get-go when they signed to Bad Boy, with Biggie going as far as to make many negative remarks about him during interviews. This led to both artists throwing subliminal disses at each other on Mack's 'Flava In Ya Ear' remix:
- Biggie:
I see the gimmicks, the wack lyrics,
the shit is depressing, pathetic, please forget it.
You're mad cause my style you're admiring,
Don't be mad, UPS is hiring.Craig Mack:
Word up, no rap no crap you bore me,
Wanna grab my dick, too lazy, hold it for me.
..A Tec-9 when I rhyme,
Plus I climb, word is bond
Your album couldn't fuck with one line.
- Tempting Fate: The names of Biggie's albums.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: His marriage with Faith Evans.◊ Not that he was ugly, mind you, he just wasn't exactly the most attractive guy around.
- Biggie himself would disagree with this.
- Villain Protagonist: 'Gimme the Loot', 'Dead Wrong,' and 'Who Shot Ya?'
- Vocal Evolution: Notable in that you could hear it as early as Ready to Die. Initially, Biggie rapped with a slightly higher, nasally tone; especially in his demo tapes. Once he recorded 'Big Poppa', he began using the smoky Badass Baritone he became known for, and never looked back since.
'And if you don't know, now you know, nigga.'
Index
Artist Biography by Steve Huey
In just a few short years, the Notorious B.I.G. went from a Brooklyn street hustler to the savior of East Coast hip-hop to a tragic victim of the culture of violence he depicted so realistically on his records. His all-too-brief odyssey almost immediately took on mythic proportions, especially since his murder followed the shooting of rival Tupac Shakur by only six months. In death, the man also known as Biggie Smalls became a symbol of the senseless violence that plagued inner-city America in the waning years of the 20th century. Whether or not his death was really the result of a much-publicized feud between the East and West Coast hip-hop scenes, it did mark the point where both sides stepped back from a rivalry that had gone too far. Hip-hop's self-image would never quite be the same, and neither would public perception. The aura of martyrdom that surrounds the Notorious B.I.G. sometimes threatens to overshadow his musical legacy, which was actually quite significant. Aided by Sean 'Puffy' Combs' radio-friendly sensibility, Biggie reestablished East Coast rap's viability by leading it into the post-Dr. Dre gangsta age. Where fellow East Coasters the Wu-Tang Clan slowly built an underground following, Biggie crashed onto the charts and became a star right out of the box. In the process, he helped Combs' Bad Boy label supplant Death Row as the biggest hip-hop imprint in America, and also paved the way to popular success for other East Coast talents like Jay-Z and Nas. Biggie was a gifted storyteller with a sense of humor and an eye for detail, and his narratives about the often-violent life of the streets were rarely romanticized; instead, they were told with a gritty, objective realism that won him enormous respect and credibility. The general consensus in the rap community was that when his life was cut short, Biggie was just getting started.
Notorious B.i.g. Music
The Notorious B.I.G. was born Christopher Wallace on May 21, 1972, and grew up in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. He was interested in rap from a young age, performing with local groups like the Old Gold Brothers and the Techniques, the latter of whom brought the teenaged Wallace his first trip to a recording studio. He had already adopted the name Biggie Smalls at this point, a reference to his ample frame: he would grow to be over six feet tall and nearly 400 pounds. Although he was a good student, he dropped out of high school at age 17 to live life on the streets. Attracted by the money and flashy style of local drug dealers, he started selling crack for a living. He got busted on a trip to North Carolina and spent nine months in jail, and upon his release, he made some demo recordings on a friend's four-track. The resulting tape fell into the hands of Mister Cee, a DJ working with Big Daddy Kane; Cee in turn passed the tape on to hip-hop magazine The Source, which gave Biggie a positive write-up in a regular feature on unsigned artists. Thanks to the publicity, Biggie caught the attention of Uptown Records producer Sean 'Puffy' Combs, who signed him immediately. With his new daughter in need of immediate financial support, Biggie kept dealing drugs for a short time until Combs found out and laid down the law. Not long after Biggie's signing, Combs split from Uptown to form his own label, Bad Boy, and took Biggie with him.
Changing his primary stage name from Biggie Smalls to the Notorious B.I.G., the newly committed rapper made his recording debut on a 1993 remix of Mary J. Blige's single 'Real Love.' He soon guested on another Blige remix, 'What's the 411?,' and contributed his first solo cut, 'Party and Bullshit,' to the soundtrack of the film Who's the Man? Now with a considerable underground buzz behind him, the Notorious B.I.G. delivered his debut album, Ready to Die, in September 1994. Its lead single, 'Juicy,' went gold, and the follow-up smash, 'Big Poppa,' achieved platinum sales and went Top Ten on the pop and R&B charts. Biggie's third single, 'One More Chance,' tied Michael Jackson's 'Scream' for the highest debut ever on the pop charts; it entered at number five en route to an eventual peak at number two, and went all the way to number one on the R&B side. By the time the dust settled, Ready to Die had sold over four million copies and turned the Notorious B.I.G. into a hip-hop sensation -- the first major star the East Coast had produced since the rise of Dr. Dre's West Coast G-funk. Not long after Ready to Die was released, Biggie married R&B singer and Bad Boy labelmate Faith Evans. In November 1994, West Coast gangsta star Tupac Shakur was shot several times in the lobby of a New York recording studio and robbed of thousands of dollars in jewelry. Shakur survived and accused Combs and his onetime friend Biggie of planning the attack, a charge both of them fervently denied. The ill will gradually snowballed into a heated rivalry between West and East Coast camps, with upstart Bad Boy now challenging Suge Knight's Death Row empire for hip-hop supremacy. Meanwhile, Biggie turned his energies elsewhere. He shepherded the career of Junior M.A.F.I.A., a group consisting of some of his childhood rap partners, and guested on their singles 'Player's Anthem' and 'Get Money.' He also boosted several singles by his labelmates, such as Total's 'Can't You See' and 112's 'Only You,' and worked with superstars like Michael Jackson (HIStory) and R. Kelly ('[You to Be] Happy,' from R. Kelly). With the singles from Ready to Die still burning up the airwaves as well, Biggie ended 1995 as not only the top-selling rap artist, but also the biggest solo male act on both the pop and R&B charts. He also ran into trouble with the law on more than one occasion. A concert promoter accused him and members of his entourage of assaulting him when he refused to pay the promised fee after a concert cancellation. Later in the year, Biggie pled guilty to criminal mischief after attacking two harassing autograph seekers with a baseball bat. The year 1996 was even more tumultuous. More legal problems ensued after police found marijuana and weapons in a raid on Biggie's home in Teaneck, New Jersey. Meanwhile, Junior M.A.F.I.A. member Lil' Kim released her first solo album under Biggie's direction, and the two made little effort to disguise their concurrent love affair. 2Pac, still nursing a grudge against Biggie and Combs, recorded a vicious slam on the East Coast scene called 'Hit 'Em Up,' in which he taunted Biggie about having slept with Faith Evans (who was by now estranged from her husband). What was more, during the recording sessions for Biggie's second album, he suffered rather serious injuries in a car accident and was confined to a wheelchair for a time. Finally, in September 1996, Tupac Shakur was murdered in a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas strip. Given their very public feud, it didn't take long for rumors of Biggie's involvement to start swirling, although none were substantiated. Biggie was also criticized for not attending an anti-violence hip-hop summit held in Harlem in the wake of Shakur's death.
Observers hoped that Shakur's murder would serve as a wake-up call for gangsta rap in general, that on-record boasting had gotten out of hand and spilled into reality. Sadly, it would take another tragedy to drive that point home. In the early morning hours of March 9, 1997, the Notorious B.I.G. was leaving a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles thrown by Vibe magazine in celebration of the Soul Train Music Awards. He sat in the passenger side of his SUV, with his bodyguard in the driver's seat and Junior M.A.F.I.A. member Lil' Cease in the back. According to most witnesses, another vehicle pulled up on the right side of the SUV while it was stopped at a red light, and six to ten shots were fired. Biggie's bodyguard rushed him to the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but it was already too late. As much as Shakur was mourned, Biggie's death was perhaps even more shocking; it meant that Shakur's death was not an isolated incident, and that hip-hop's highest-profile talents might be caught in the middle of an escalating war. Naturally, speculation ran rampant that Biggie's killers were retaliating for Shakur's death, and since the case remains unsolved, the world may never know.
The Inventory
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the release of the Notorious B.I.G.'s second album went ahead as planned at the end of March. The eerily titled Life After Death was a sprawling, guest-laden double-disc set that seemed designed to compete with 2Pac's All Eyez on Me in terms of ambition and epic scope. Unsurprisingly, it entered the charts at number one, selling nearly 700,000 copies in its first week of release and spending a total of four weeks on top. The first single, 'Hypnotize,' went platinum and hit number one on the pop chart, and its follow-up, 'Mo Money Mo Problems,' duplicated both feats, making the Notorious B.I.G. the first artist ever to score two posthumous number one hits. A third single, 'Sky's the Limit,' went gold, and Life After Death was certified ten-times platinum approximately two years after its release. Plus, Combs -- now rechristened Puff Daddy -- and Faith Evans scored one of 1997's biggest singles with their tribute 'I'll Be Missing You.' In 1999, an album of previously unreleased B.I.G. material, Born Again, was released and entered the charts at number one. It eventually went double platinum. Six years later, Duets: The Final Chapter (studio scraps paired with new verses from several MCs and vocalists) surfaced and reached number three on the album chart. In the years following Christopher Wallace's death, little official progress was made in the LAPD's murder investigation, and it began to look as if the responsible parties would never be brought to justice. The 2Pac retaliation theory still holds sway in many quarters, and it has also been speculated that members of the Crips gang murdered Wallace in a dispute over money owed for security services. In an article for Rolling Stone, and later a full-length book titled Labyrinth, journalist Randall Sullivan argued that Suge Knight hired onetime LAPD officer David Mack -- a convicted bank robber with ties to the Bloods -- to arrange a hit on Wallace, and that the gunman was a hitman and mortgage broker named Amir Muhammad. Sullivan further argued that when it became clear how many corrupt LAPD officers were involved with Death Row Records, the department hushed up as much as it could and all but abandoned detective Russell Poole's investigation recommendations.
Documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield used Labyrinth as a basis for 2002's Biggie and Tupac, which featured interviews with Poole and Knight, among others. In April 2002, Faith Evans and Voletta Wallace (Biggie's mother) filed a civil suit against the LAPD alleging wrongful death, among other charges. In September of that year, the Los Angeles Times published a report alleging that the Notorious B.I.G. had paid members of the Crips one million dollars to murder 2Pac, and even supplied the gun used. Several of Biggie's relatives and friends stepped forward to say that the rapper had been recording in New Jersey, not masterminding a hit in Las Vegas; the report was also roundly criticized in the hip-hop community, which was anxious to avoid reopening old wounds. Outside legal matters, the B.I.G. legacy continued to be burnished with the 2007 compilation Greatest Hits, the 2009 biopic Notorious, and 2017's The King & I. The third posthumous duets album, The King & I was co-credited to Evans, whose new vocals were combined with a mix of familiar and previously unreleased verses from Biggie. In 2019, to mark the 25th anniversary of his landmark Ready to Die, Rhino reissued the set as a deluxe box set that included photos and stories from the era.