<Archive Obituary> Chris 'The Notorious B.I.G.' Wallace (March 9th 1997)
Bill Schenley
Photo:
http://www.post-gazette.com/images2/20040216HObiggie_230.jpg
FROM: The New York Times (March 10th 1997) ~
By Todd S. Purdum
Notorious B.I.G., a gangsta rap artist who turned his drug-dealing
past on
the streets of Brooklyn into a platinum-selling recording career, was
killed
here early this morning in an apparent drive-by shooting. He is the
second
big-name rapper to be slain in the last six months.
The victim, whose real name was Christopher G. Wallace, had left a
crowded
party and was sitting in a sport utility vehicle when a vehicle sped
up and
began spitting gunfire, witnesses said. A bystander rushed Mr.
Wallace, 24,
to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, the
police
said.
Mr. Wallace was a fierce rival of Tupac Shakur, the 25-year-old rap
star who
was fatally shot in a drive-by attack six months ago. Mr. Shakur had
accused
Mr. Wallace of involvement in a 1994 robbery in which Mr. Shakur was
shot
and lost $40,000 in jewelry.
Mr. Wallace, who stood a hulking 6 feet 3 inches and weighed nearly
300
pounds, was also known as Biggie Smalls. He had burst onto the rap
scene
three years ago with his first album, ''Ready to Die,'' blending
firsthand
accounts of misdeeds some rappers only brag about with ambivalent
expressions of fear and paranoia about sustaining his success.
''I'm scared to death,'' he said in a 1994 interview in his mother's
home in
Brooklyn, where he had a pair of 9-millimeter guns under his mattress.
''Scared of getting my brains blown out.''
Kevin Kim, who saw the shooting, said Mr. Wallace had just attended a
party
at the Petersen Automotive Museum. The event, in the Wilshire district
known
as Miracle Mile, celebrated the 11th Annual Soul Train Music Awards,
which
were presented in South-Central Los Angeles on Friday.
Don Cornelius, the executive producer of ''Soul Train,'' the weekly
television dance show, said the program had not sponsored the party.
The police said the shooting had occurred after the Fire Department
had
closed the party because the museum had been too crowded, and the
guests had
begun to disperse.
Mr. Wallace was sitting in a GMC Suburban in the museum's parking
area, Mr.
Kim said. ''Someone just rolled by and started shooting.''
Mr. Wallace's estranged wife, Faith Evans, a singer who had a child
with Mr.
Wallace, also saw the shooting.
Robert Payne, a security guard at a high-rise office building across
the
street, said, ''All of a sudden, I heard about five or six shots --
pow,
pow, pow, pow, pow.''
Mr. Payne said some passengers in Mr. Wallace's vehicle, which had
been
moving erratically before the shooting, had jumped out and then back
in
before they sped away.
Detectives at the Wilshire Boulevard station declined to offer any
details
beyond the sketchy account of the shooting released by police
headquarters.
But speculation inevitably centered on the rivalry between Mr. Wallace
and
his producer and protector, Sean (Puffy) Combs of Bad Boy
Entertainment, and
Mr. Shakur and his producer, Marion (Suge) Knight, the head of Death
Row
Records.
Mr. Wallace's new double album ''Life After Death'' is to be released
March
25; the car in which he was killed had a sticker that said, ''Think
B.I.G.
March 25.'' An advertisement for the album in the April issue of Vibe
magazine features a somber Mr. Wallace in a frock coat and brimmed
hat,
standing beside an image of his own tombstone.
Mr. Shakur, who also grew up in New York City but came to prominence
on the
West Coast, where he later lived, had long accused Mr. Wallace of
stealing
his style. He also said Mr. Wallace was involved in the 1994 robbery,
in a
recording studio lobby in Manhattan. Mr. Wallace, a dominant figure in
East
Coast rap, was conspicuously absent from a well-publicized ''rap
summit'' in
Harlem after Mr. Shakur's slaying.
Mr. Knight, who got into a fight hours before Mr. Shakur was shot in
the
vehicle Mr. Knight was driving, was sentenced to nine years in prison
on
Feb. 28 for violating a 1995 probation stemming from past assaults.
The
judge ruled that he had violated probation by getting into the fight
at the
MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas on Sept. 7.
Mr. Wallace, too, had a criminal record. Last summer, he was arrested
at his
home in Teaneck, N.J., on drug and weapons charges. A year ago, he was
charged with assault after chasing two autograph seekers outside the
Palladium nightclub in Manhattan and smashing the windows of their cab
with
a baseball bat. At age 17, he was arrested on a cocaine-dealing charge
in
North Carolina and spent nine months in jail while waiting to post
bail.
In the new documentary on hip-hop culture, ''Rhyme and Reason,'' Mr.
Wallace
reflected on his feeling that when he had stopped dealing drugs and
become a
star, the adulation of his fans was ''fake love.''
''Me hustling and selling drugs, it schooled me to the streets a
lot,'' he
said in the film. ''I learned a lot. You know what I'm saying?
''Selling drugs forever is something you can't do. You cannot do that.
You
will eventually die or go to jail.''
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Mr. Wallace and his friends once dealt
drugs
out of a garbage can in front of a fried-chicken place on Fulton
Street, his
neighborhood friends and fans did not seem surprised that Mr. Wallace
had
died in a hail of bullets.
''When you live by the gun, you die by the gun,'' said Shon Dale, 18,
who
lives in the neighborhood and owns all of Notorious B.I.G.'s music.
Along the tree-lined, working-class block where Mr. Wallace grew up,
his
former neighbors said they were proud of the success of a hometown
boy. Yet
many added that they were tired of the rivalry between the country's
most
popular gangsta rappers.
Mr. Dale said, ''There should have been no beef between him and
Tupac,'' he
said. ''There should have been peace."
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Photo:
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Rapping, Living and Dying a Gangsta Life
FROM: The New York Times (March 10th 1997) ~
By Jon Pareles
On the West Coast, there was Tupac Shakur. On the East Coast, there
was
Christopher G. Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G. and Biggie Smalls.
Now
both are dead after drive-by shootings.
The two rappers were bitter rivals, as Mr. Shakur accused Mr. Wallace
of
copying his style. Both were associated with hip-hop moguls who had
their
own coastal feud: Mr. Shakur with Marion (Suge) Knight of Death Row
Records
and B.I.G. with Sean (Puffy) Combs of Bad Boy Entertainment.
Despite their differences, both purveyed a similar message. They
rapped
about a gangster street life of gun toting, drug dealing, easy women
and
endless battles for dominance. That life, spawned by inner-city
poverty, was
titillating and dramatic, but it was inevitably suicidal, with
violence
begetting violence.
The Notorious B.I.G. said death was always on his mind. His first
album,
released in 1994, was ''Ready to Die'' (Bad Boy/Arista); his second, a
double album due out on March 25, is called ''Life After Death.'' On
''Ready
to Die,'' he described himself as a former drug dealer and stickup man
who
had turned to rapping.
''Used to sell crack so I could stack my riches,'' he rapped.
Actually, he
did not have the riches yet. In the March 8 issue of Billboard, he
recalled,
''When I made 'Ready to Die,' I was broke and depressed.''
But he fantasized a mixture of success and anxiety -- part
exploitation,
part warning. He recalled the mundane details of bagging, transporting
and
selling drugs; he boasted about sexual conquests and mourned a
murdered
girlfriend. The album matter-of-factly recounted the shootings and
jailings
of friends, and it was laced with paranoia, as the narrator's newfound
riches made him a target. As the album ends, the narrator commits
suicide.
Song titles for his second album include ''Notorious Thug,'' ''Ten
Crack
Commandments'' and ''Niggas Bleed Just Like Us.''
Far from suicidal offstage, Mr. Wallace had been building a musical
empire.
He produced hits for Mary J. Blige, then his own debut album and
albums for
proteges.
His clients have shown less ambivalence about gangsta life. The
youthful
Junior M.A.F.I.A. boasts about shoot-outs and Lexuses, while Lil' Kim
has
sold more than 500,000 copies of ''Hard Core,'' an album of raunchy
sexual
boasts. Between production efforts, the Notorious B.I.G. made guest
appearances, including one on Michael Jackson's ''HIStory, Volume 1.''
On stage, Mr. Wallace performed with a show of opulence, settling his
280-pound frame into a thronelike chair, a pasha of rap who asserted
that he
would defend himself against all comers. He sometimes lived up to that
image
offstage.
Like Mr. Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G. clearly perceived the hazards of
living by the gun. On ''Ready to Die,'' both his lyrics and his
ominous
production revealed his misgivings. Many gangsta rappers prophesy
their own
deaths with bravado or fatalism. Sometimes that prophecy comes true.
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Photo:
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The Short Life of a Rap Star, Shadowed by Many Troubles
FROM: The New York Times (March 17th 1997) ~
By Michael Marriott
Without being asked, Donald Watson cupped his hands to his mouth and
began
blowing and sucking air in choppy rhythms, all the while humming in
his
throat and tapping his feet in counterpoint. ''That's the way Chris
used to
do it,'' he said of the rap beats echoing off the dingy facades in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn where the two men used to rap,
joke
and trade stinging gulps of Olde English malt liquor.
Of course, Mr. Watson added, that was years before his friend
Christopher G.
Wallace -- better known by his double-fisted monikers Biggie Smalls
and the
Notorious B.I.G. -- first made it big in the early 1990's. That was
long
before Mr. Wallace became an intimidating, 280-pound bejeweled icon of
rap
who was almost as well known for his girth and gangster guile as for
his
darkly clever lyrics and the cloud of trouble and marijuana smoke that
seemed to follow him everywhere.
Mr. Wallace, who once called himself a ''full-time, 100 percent
hustler,''
also said that out of fear for his life he kept two 9-millimeter
pistols
under his bed. All the while, he earned more money than most of his
friends
ever dreamed of with raps like ''Big Poppa,'' ''Gimme the Loot'' and
''Machine Gun Funk.''
On March 9, the 24-year-old Mr. Wallace, who in his last years was
frequently bedeviled by conflicts with the police and a feud with the
rapper
Tupac Shakur, was killed in a drive-by shooting near Beverly Hills.
Mr.
Shakur was killed in a similar attack six months ago.
Tomorrow, Mr. Wallace's body is to wind through the streets of his
Brooklyn
neighborhood in a funeral procession that will begin in Fort Greene
and end
in Bedford-Stuyvesant. In the week since Mr. Wallace's death, the
story of
his rapid rise and fall has been told and retold by news organizations
as a
cautionary tale of rap and violence.
But in the neighborhood where Mr. Wallace reinvented himself as a
village
griot with attitude, his story is heard mostly in angry screams and
mournful
recollections. ''We didn't know he would be great,'' recalled Mr.
Watson,
31, a scrap metal worker who said he had known Mr. Wallace, as did
many in
the neighborhood along Fulton Street and St. James Place, from Mr.
Wallace's
teen-age days as a local drug dealer.
Despite Mr. Wallace's unpromising beginnings -- as a boy he preferred
hanging around gamblers and drug dealers to sitting in a classroom,
and
dropped out of Boys and Girls High School in the 10th grade -- his arc
of
fame is often used in some low-on-hope corners of Clinton Hill and
neighboring Bedford-Stuyvesant as a vivid illustration of self-made
success.
A teacher at the Young Minds Day Care Center recently took a
kindergarten
class by the apartment building at 226 St. James Place, where Mr.
Wallace
lived as an only child with his mother, Voletta Wallace.
''I want them to know what he was and what he became,'' said the
teacher,
Geneva Harris, who said she knew Mr. Wallace. ''He's from around here
and he
succeeded in life. I want them to know they can accomplish their
goals.''
Mr. Wallace had an undeniable talent, his friends and fans explained,
for
translating the drama of his neighborhood streets into captivating
narratives, into rhymes with a hook and an edge. In his first single,
''Unbelievable,'' taken from his 1994 debut album, ''Ready to Die,''
Mr.
Wallace rapped with characteristic poetic poison: ''Get ready to die /
Tell
God I said hi.''
More than most rappers, Mr. Wallace had a reputation for preserving
street-life authenticity in his lyrics. Some close to the recording
industry
said that Mr. Wallace had a knack for exaggeration that increased
sales for
his label, Bad Boy Entertainment. But few people in his old
neighborhood
seemed to care about that as tributes to Mr. Wallace blared from
radios and
anything with his name on it was selling out in New York record
stores.
''I feel real sad about it, because nobody had a right to kill Biggie
like
that,'' said Crystal Carson, 13. ''He was known and loved here. He
should
have stayed here; he had no business going to L.A.''
In only a few years, Mr. Wallace's bigger-than-life persona and knack
for
storytelling proved to be his platinum ticket out of his neighborhood
and
the crack culture that had helped to mold him. His success was almost
accidental: people who were close to Mr. Wallace in the late 1980's
said
that he used to rap only for fun. In an Arista Records biography, Mr.
Wallace said of the days when he would occasionally record in
makeshift
basement recording studios, ''It was fun just hearing myself on tape
over
beats.''
Although he had no serious intent on getting a recording deal, one of
his
neighborhood tapes landed in 1992 in the hands of editors at The
Source, a
national monthly magazine that covers the rap scene. Mr. Wallace soon
found
himself in the magazine's ''Unsigned Hype'' column, a showcase for new
rap
talent.
In an unusual move, said Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, the magazine's music
editor,
Mr. Wallace was asked to join a recording project including the best
unsigned artists the magazine had discovered.
Although the recording was never released, Mr. Hinds said that word
quickly
spread about Biggie Smalls, leading to guest appearances on recordings
by
high-profile rap, rhythm and blues and pop artists, including Mary J.
Blige
and Supercat.
''In a few months, Biggie had a deal,'' Mr. Hinds said. Along the way,
a
young rap entrepreneur and producer named Sean (Puffy) Combs became
close to
Mr. Wallace, and brought him to his newly founded company, Bad Boy
Entertainment. In 1994, they released ''Ready to Die.'' It sold more
than a
million copies. The following year, Mr. Wallace was named rap artist
of the
year at the Billboard Awards.
But trouble had already begun. In December 1994, Mr. Shakur was shot
and
robbed in the lobby of a midtown Manhattan office building. He accused
Mr.
Wallace and Mr. Combs, who were upstairs in a recording studio at the
time,
of plotting the ambush. Both men denied it.
The feud between Mr. Wallace and Mr. Shakur, who had publicly boasted
of
having an affair with Mr. Wallace's wife, the singer Faith Evans,
underscored the tensions and taunts between groups of West Coast
rappers,
like Mr. Shakur, and those on the East Coast, like Mr. Wallace.
The rivalry heightened when Mr. Shakur was killed last fall after
attending
a Mike Tyson prize fight in Las Vegas. (The police in Las Vegas said
last
week that they had no evidence connecting the shootings of Mr. Shakur
and
Mr. Wallace.)
For days after Mr. Wallace's death, a votive candle flickered feebly
above
the doorway of 226 St. James Place. A bouquet of blue carnations and
yellow
daisies lay nearby, with a photograph of Mr. Wallace decked out in
full
gangster garb: a wide-brimmed hat and four-button suit, a fur overcoat
draped over his shoulders, and his trademark fat cigar and diamond-
studded
pinky ring.
Deborah Person, 39, said she was familiar with his image. But she said
she
remembered Mr. Wallace as just another young black man trying to make
it any
way he could. She said she doubted -- despite what Mr. Wallace claimed
in
interviews -- that he had ever robbed people in the neighborhood she
has
called home for much of her life.
''Find a woman who says he took her purse and someone who says he
stuck a
gun in their face,'' Ms. Person said as she stood on a strip of dry
cleaners, barber shops, liquor stores, restaurants and video shops
along
Fulton Street. ''He was no gangster.''
Little of Mr. Wallace's early years is known. Attempts to interview
his
mother and his estranged wife, Ms. Evans, who is also the mother of
Mr.
Wallace's infant son, Christopher Wallace Jr., were unsuccessful. Mr.
Wallace also had a 4-year-old daughter, Tyanna.
In an interview in ''Rhyme and Reason,'' a new documentary film about
the
rap world, Mr. Wallace described himself as a former neighborhood thug
who
found a better way to live. But his evolution from street hustler to
star
rapper did not insulate him from clashes with the law.
His earliest arrest, according to police records, was in 1989 on St.
James
Place on weapons possession charges. He was sentenced to five years'
probation. The next year, he was arrested in Brooklyn on a violation
of his
probation.
In 1991, Mr. Wallace was arrested again, accused of dealing cocaine in
North
Carolina. He spent nine months in jail while waiting to make bail.
Even after Mr. Wallace became famous, trouble shadowed him. Last March
23,
he was arrested near the Palladium dance club in Manhattan. According
to
court papers, he chased two autograph seekers and threatened to kill
them,
smashing the windows of their taxicab with a baseball bat, then
pulling one
of the fans out and punching him.
Mr. Wallace pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment and was
sentenced to
100 hours of community service.
Last summer, Mr. Wallace was arrested at his home in Teaneck, N.J.,
after
the police found 50 grams of marijuana and four automatic weapons with
laser
sights, enlarged bullet clips and filed-off serial numbers. Seven
other
people were arrested at the house and charged with disorderly conduct.
In the same summer, Mr. Wallace was arrested on charges of beating and
robbing the friend of a concert promoter on May 6, 1995, at a
nightclub in
Camden, N.J. The robbery charges were dismissed, and the man received
$25,000 from Mr. Wallace in a civil suit. Mr. Wallace's municipal
court case
was unresolved at his death.
Then last fall, Mr. Wallace was charged with drug possession after the
police said they caught him smoking marijuana in a car near the Fulton
Mall
in Brooklyn.
Despite all his troubles, Mr. Wallace was excited about the future
during
his last days, many of his friends and rap associates said. His second
album, ''Life After Death,'' is to be in record stores March 25.
''He was so happy,'' recalled Wanda Harris, another neighborhood
acquaintance who said she had known the rapper since 1990.
''Everything
seemed to be working out for him.''
''I saw a big difference,'' she said, ''a lot of maturity.''
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