Trenton Coley
Netflix just released the Notorious B.I.G. documentary titled, Biggie I Got A Story To Tell. Legit. The film is about 1.5 hours long and talks to all types of people who were close to the prolific, Brooklyn rapper who raised the bar for hip hop lyricists & storytelling. Here go 5 things you might not have known about the late, great, legendary, hip hop heavyweight, Christopher Wallace.
- BIG loved to sing R&B songs! For being one of the GOATs of MC history, who knew the black Frank White was lowkey on his K-Ci & JoJo adlibs.
2. Diddy remembers at the time when him & BIG was working on the hip hop classic 1994 album Ready To Die, Dr. Dre. & Snoop Dogg had been killing the game with Dre’s own classic 1992 album. Puff says those two really caused him & BIG to step they game up!
3. One of BIG‘s neighbors was a young Jazz Musician by the name of Donald Harrison. He played jazz sax with big names like Miles Davis & Lena Horne. When BIG was a kid (and it was probably like 1980 something), since Donald lived on the block he sometimes would take BIG to museums & movies. Just trying to introduce the kid to other cultures & art forms. This says volumes about BIG‘s melodic styles!
4. BIG, like many other young black men in America, especially in low-income housing neighborhoods, was exposed to death early in life and at a rapid pace. In 1994, Christopher Wallace, BKA Notorious B.I.G. dropped Ready To Die. The whole world was rocking this album. The last track on this classic is called Suicidal Thoughts. BIG lost some of his close childhood friends to street violence. Those pains & realities are heard in his music, fr.
5. In 1993 (same year his daughter was born), BIG was at a crossroads. He was still pushing in the streets and was bout to OT up to North Cac when Puff gave him the deciding choice. Either stick with hustling or leave it alone and dedicate more time to the music and performing. Luckily for us, BIG chose music. With such a short lived life & career, Christopher Wallace shared his talents with the world, resulting in him becoming one of the most influential hip hop lyricists of all time!
BONUS: Around the time Bad Boy was shooting the video for the track Warning, BIG received a cease & desist letter from a white/latino, Westcoast, underground rapper claiming to be the original Biggy Smallz. The letter told BIG that if he didn’t stop using the name immediately he would sue BIGGIE for “everything I got”! GTFOH!
