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 be quite 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. Helped by Sean "Puffy" Combs' radio-friendly sensibility, Biggie re-established 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,
sadly, Biggie was just getting started.
