The Notorious B.I.G. HHV Records 43 Items

Into the Mainstream with Gangsta Rap

When discussing the most influential rappers in history, Christopher Wallace aka The Notorious B.I.G. is usually at the top. In the 90s, the New Yorker quickly became the most important rapper on the East Coast and introduced gangsta rap into the mainstream with just two albums. Tracks like Hypnotize or Big Poppa are hip-hop classics today and are known even to laymen. Born in Brooklyn, Wallace’s demo tape in 1993, then under the name Biggie Small, caught the attention of rapper Puff Daddy, who immediately signed him to his label Bad Boy Entertainment. The street rapper can be heard for the first time in the same year on various remixes of well-known R&B songs, his first own single Party and Bullshit shows him in comparatively aggressive form and already gains him a small following. He enters the charts a year later with his track Juicy, only to revive East Coast hip-hop shortly thereafter with his now legendary album Ready to Die. The record tells Biggie’s life story from birth to the present and lets us dive into the different facets of his life – growing up in the ghetto, drug use and violence, but also relationships and depression. The rapper is notorious for his relentless realism. The way he depicts his own world in simple lyrical form and tells it with an almost effortless, gritty flow on funk beats makes him a unique storyteller. In the process, lines keep popping up that stare you in the face with their directness and make you want to pause. And despite his criminal past, Wallace makes it clear at the end of the album that he has no regrets: “When I die, fuck it, I wanna go to hell.”

East Coast vs. West Coast

Features with Michael Jackson and the labelmates of 112 follow, both songs provide Wallace with further chart successes. He also helps his childhood friends from Junior M.A.F.I.A. with their debut album on the charts by writing for them and mentoring them. In 1995 Billboard names him Rapper of the Year, and that year he is officially the solo artist and rapper with the most records sold in the United States. At the same time, the conflict between East and West Coast intensifies when his former friend 2Pac is shot and robbed, publicly calling Biggie an accomplice. The most famous beef in hip-hop history begins, and the two rappers become the central figures of the rivalry between the two coasts. In 1996, 2Pac releases the disstrack Hit ’Em Up, and shortly thereafter he is shot by gang members. Wallace is accused of being involved, and public pressure mounts. After starting to promote his new album, Wallace also dies in March 1997 after another assassination attempt, just 24 years old. Although there is no solid evidence of a connection, the deaths of the two trigger a wave of outrage and mark the end of a hip-hop era.

Death as a leitmotif

Often overshadowed by his tragic end, however, the Notorious B.I.G. succeeds in another big hit with his second record, Life After Death, which is celebrated internationally as a hybrid between gangsta rap and pop. Released just two weeks after Biggie’s murder, the record picks up where his debut left off and symbolically resurrects him here. Death always plays a leading role in his music, right at the beginning he makes it clear: “Somebody’s got to die”. From the album titles to his brutally honest lyrics about murder and suicidal thoughts, the subject is always present in his life. On other songs, like I Love The Dough or Mo Money Mo Problems, B.I.G. musically approaches a mainstream audience without losing his credibility as a street rapper – clearly showing that both are possible. With his departure, the Notorious B.I.G. leaves behind a life’s work as short as it is powerful, one that is destined to change hip-hop forever.