Who Was Biggie Smalls? by Kely Espinosa https://padlet.com/tamaespin8/veniv13030ocpoic Biography en-us 2021-07-19 02:58:22 UTC 2021-07-19 03:08:42 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/1272589446/cbd9b0288da0617e325d8b1ff74a983f/biggie.webp tamaespin8 https://padlet.com/tamaespin8/veniv13030ocpoic/wish/1654238878 Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G., lived a short life. He was 24 years old when he was gunned down in 1997 in Los Angeles, a murder that has never been solved. 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. Dre and Death Row Records. 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. He styled himself as a gangster and although he was no angel, in reality he was more of a performer than a hardened criminal. 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.

Early Life
Christopher George Latore Wallace was born on May 21, 1972, in Brooklyn, New York. 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. 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. But Biggie subsequently transferred to the George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School; alumni include the rappers DMX, Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes. Biggie had excelled at English, but often played truant at Westinghouse and dropped out altogether in 1989 at age 17. Acquiring 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. James Place. Voletta worked long hours and had no inkling of her son's activities. Biggie stepped up the drug dealing after quitting school and was soon in trouble with the law. He received a five-year probationary sentence in 1989 after being arrested on weapons possession charges. The following year he was arrested for violating that probation. 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.
Bad Boy Records
Biggie began rapping as a teenager to entertain people in his neighborhood. 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. 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. 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. Combs arranged a record deal for Biggie, but left the label soon after, having fallen out with his boss, Andre Harrell. Combs went on to set up his own imprint, Bad Boy Records, and by mid-1992 Biggie had joined him. Before 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. Blige's "Real Love" in August 1992 that featured a guest verse from The Notorious B.I.G. (He had been forced to change his recording name after a lawsuit; though he continued to be widely known as Biggie). In June 1993, the label released The Notorious BIG's first single as a solo artist, "Party and Bullshit.



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