The Notorious B.I.G.

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Notorious B.I.G. was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles on the 9th of March 1997. He was twenty-four years old. Sixteen days later, his second studio album, Life After Death, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The man who made it was already gone.

  His name was Christopher George Latore Wallace. He was born at Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn on the 21st of May, 1972, the only child of a preschool teacher and a welder. He grew up on Fulton Street in Clinton Hill, near the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant, in a neighborhood where drug dealing was as common as conversation. By twenty-four, he had released music that Rolling Stone would later call the work of the greatest rapper that ever lived. By twenty-four, he was dead.

  How does someone move from selling crack on the streets of Brooklyn to reshaping American music in just a few years? And what does it mean that his most celebrated album arrived in record stores after he was buried? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. Clinton Hill to Clinton Correctional

  ›

  Voletta Wallace worked two jobs to raise her son after his father, Selwyn George Latore, left the family three months before Christopher's third birthday. She was strict. She raised him as a Jehovah's Witness, enrolled him at St. Peter Claver Church in Brooklyn, and had no idea he was hiding money on the roof of their apartment.

  Wallace discovered marijuana around age twelve, introduced by a friend. By the time he was attending Westinghouse High School alongside future celebrities including Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes, he weighed 91 kg and had earned the nickname Big. The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s pulled at him. Despite being an honor student, he dropped out of school at sixteen.

  Arrests followed in quick succession. In 1989, weapons charges in Brooklyn led to five years of probation. He violated that probation the following year. Then came an arrest in North Carolina for dealing crack cocaine, and nine months in jail before making bail. The street and the jail cell were shaping him as surely as any classroom had.

  Even then, music ran alongside all of it. As a teenager Wallace had formed a group called the Techniques with two friends, Michael Bynum and Hubert Sams. They worked on early songs at the home studio of Donald Harrison, a saxophonist from New Orleans. The group dissolved as Sams focused on football and Bynum lost interest. Wallace kept going, adopting the stage name Biggie Smalls from a character played by Calvin Lockhart in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again.

• 3. The Tape That Changed Everything

  ›

  After his release from jail, Wallace recorded a demo tape in 1991 called Microphone Murderer with a disc jockey named 50 Grand. He reportedly had little ambition for it. But local DJ Mister Cee, known for his work with Big Daddy Kane and the Juice Crew, heard it and sent it to Matteo Capoluongo, an editor at The Source magazine.

  Capoluongo featured the track in The Source's "Unsigned Hype" section in March 1992, a column dedicated to showcasing promising rappers. Sean Combs read the column and arranged to meet Wallace. The meeting set off a chain of events that would alter the course of hip-hop. Combs connected Wallace to a remix of Mary J. Blige's hit "Real Love".

  By March 1992, Wallace was signed to Uptown Records. His first true solo opportunity came in 1993 when Combs was creating a track for the soundtrack of the film Who's the Man?. That song, "Party and Bullshit", was produced by Brooklyn-based Easy Mo Bee and drew on the spoken-word tradition of the Last Poets. Development on Wallace's debut album began at Capoluongo's apartment in late 1992.

  In July 1993, Combs was fired from Uptown Records by his mentor Andre Harrell, losing access to the songs already recorded. A month later, Wallace's daughter T'yanna Dream Wallace was born on the 8th of August, 1993. Combs promptly launched Bad Boy Records and signed Wallace to the new label. Combs also secured a $1.5 million advance from Arista Records CEO Clive Davis, with full creative control, and used the money to buy back the tracks Harrell held.

• 4. Ready to Die

  ›

  Recorded at the Hit Factory between 1993 and 1994, Ready to Die was released on the 13th of September, 1994. Wallace had originally wanted to call it The Teflon Don, drawing inspiration from crime figure John Gotti. Combs pushed back, arguing the title needed to reach a broader audience. They settled on Ready to Die together.

  Wallace sold 500,000 copies in the album's first week. Ready to Die reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and earned four-times platinum certification. At a moment when West Coast hip-hop was dominating American charts, the album redirected attention eastward. Busta Rhymes recalled seeing Wallace hand out copies from his home, which Rhymes described as "his way of marketing himself".

  The album's single "Big Poppa" topped the U.S. rap chart. "One More Chance" sold one million copies in 1995 alone. Wallace described the record as "a big pie, with each slice indicating a different point in his life involving bitches and niggas, from the beginning to the end". He said he felt "broke and depressed" while making it. The final track, "Suicidal Thoughts", portrays a character who contemplates and commits suicide.

  At The Source Awards in August 1995, Wallace won Best New Artist, Lyricist of the Year, and Live Performer of the Year. Ready to Die was named Album of the Year. On the cover of The Source in July 1995, the caption read "The King of New York Takes Over", a nod to his alias Frank White, taken from the 1990 film King of New York. He was also named Rap Artist of the Year at the Billboard Awards that year.

• 5. The Feud and Its Costs

  ›

  Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace had been close friends. Lil' Cease remembered them traveling together constantly when neither was working. Yukmouth, an Oakland emcee, said Wallace's early style was influenced by Shakur.

  The break came after a robbery on the 30th of November, 1994, during which Shakur was shot five times outside a recording studio. In an April 1995 interview with Vibe, conducted while Shakur was serving time in Clinton Correctional Facility, Shakur accused Andre Harrell, Sean Combs, and Wallace of having prior knowledge of the attack. Wallace denied any involvement, stating publicly that it was a coincidence he had been nearby and that Shakur could not identify the real perpetrators at the time. In 2012, a man named Dexter Isaac, serving a life sentence for unrelated crimes, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was orchestrated by entertainment executive James Rosemond.

  After his release from prison, Shakur signed with Death Row Records in October 1995, making Death Row and Bad Boy direct business rivals. In June 1996, Shakur released "Hit 'Em Up", a diss track aimed at Wallace, Combs, Junior M.A.F.I.A., and Faith Evans. Wallace's response was a line on his collaboration with Jay-Z on Reasonable Doubt: "If Faith has twins, she'll probably have two Pacs. Get it? Tu... Pac's." Wallace explained that humor had been his way of coping with hardship since elementary school.

  On the 7th of September, 1996, Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas and died six days later. The night Shakur died, Wallace called Evans in tears. Evans recalled that "he was in shock and it's fair to say he was probably afraid". Wallace declined to attend Shakur's funeral, citing the damage the feud had caused to his marriage and his public image. In October 1996, while the feud's fallout still hung over him, Evans gave birth to his son, Christopher "C.J." Wallace Jr.

• 6. Life After Death and the End

  ›

  The three-day video shoot for "Hypnotize" in Los Angeles carried a budget of $700,000. Wallace had arrived in the city two weeks before the Soul Train Music Awards, and the shoot was both promotional and personal: a signal that he was back, healthy, and working despite the car crash that had broken his left leg and left him reliant on a cane.

  "Hypnotize" was officially released on the 4th of March, 1997. It debuted at number two in the U.S. and later climbed to number one. On the 8th of March, Wallace attended a Soul Train Awards after-party at the Petersen Automotive Museum hosted by Vibe and Qwest Records. Guests included Aaliyah and members of both the Bloods and Crips. Fire marshals shut the venue down at 12:35 a.m. on the 9th of March after overcrowding reached more than 2,000 people.

  Wallace and his crew rode in a Chevrolet Suburban rented from Budget Rent a Car. He sat in the front passenger seat alongside Damion "D-Roc" Butler, Lil' Cease, and driver Gregory "G-Money" Young. A black Chevrolet Impala pulled alongside. The driver, described as an unidentified man in a blue suit and bow tie, drew a 9mm blue-steel pistol. Wallace was struck by four bullets. An autopsy released fifteen years later found that only the final shot proved fatal: it entered through his right hip, passed through his colon, liver, and heart, and came to rest in his left shoulder.

  His funeral at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan on the 18th of March drew more than 350 mourners, including Mary J. Blige, Queen Latifah, Run-D.M.C., DJ Kool Herc, David Dinkins, and Clive Davis. His body was cremated at the Fresh Pond Crematory in Queens, and the ashes were given to his family. His killer has never been identified.

• 7. Voice and Craft

  ›

  Wallace rapped as a baritone. Rolling Stone described his natural register as a "thick, jaunty grumble" that grew even deeper on Life After Death. He was known for composing lyrics in his head rather than writing them down, a practice that gave his delivery an internal quality few peers matched.

  The Source's "Unsigned Hype" column described his style as "cool, nasal, and filtered". Time magazine highlighted his capacity for multi-syllabic rhymes delivered smoothly. Big Daddy Kane noted that Wallace did not rely on a wide vocabulary; instead, as Kane put it, he "just put his words together a slick way, and it worked well for him".

  His lyrical range was wide. He addressed mafioso narratives in "Niggas Bleed", his drug-dealing past in "Ten Crack Commandments", materialistic themes in "Hypnotize", and romantic experience in "Me & My Bitch". In 2004, Rolling Stone praised him as "one of the few young male songwriters in any pop style writing credible love songs". He could also pivot: on "Playa Hater" he sang in a slow falsetto; on "Notorious Thugs" he matched the rapid-fire delivery of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

  New York Times journalist Touré observed that Wallace's lyrics mixed autobiographical details about crime and violence with emotional honesty. Fellow journalist Michel Marriott, writing in 1997, noted that the lyrics were not entirely autobiographical, as Wallace exaggerated for storytelling effect and commercial appeal. Scholar Adam Krims described his rhythmic approach as "effusive", and Lateef of Latyrx called his flows "intense and complex". The result was a body of work that artists ranging from Jay-Z to Kendrick Lamar would draw from for decades.

• 8. Legacy

  ›

  Life After Death was certified diamond by the RIAA. "Mo Money Mo Problems", featuring Combs and Mase, made Wallace the first artist to achieve two posthumous number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100. His certified U.S. sales exceed 28 million copies, including 21 million albums.

  Billboard named him the greatest rapper of all time in 2015. The Source gave him that designation in its 150th issue. Rolling Stone called him the greatest rapper that ever lived. In 2020, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  In Brooklyn, a mural depicting Wallace stands on Fulton Street, near where he spent his childhood. In 2019, the corner of Fulton Street and St. James Place was renamed in his honor. The Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation runs an annual charity event called "B.I.G. Night Out", raising funds for children's educational resources; the acronym B.I.G. now stands for "Books Instead of Guns".

  Before he died, Wallace had begun developing a clothing line called Brooklyn Mint, focused on plus-sized apparel. The brand went dormant after his death and was relaunched in 2004 by his managers Mark Pitts and Wayne Barrow, with help from Jay-Z, with proceeds benefitting the Christopher Wallace Foundation and the Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation. His son C.J. Wallace released a house remix of "Big Poppa" in August 2020, twenty-three years after his father's death.