Christopher George Letore Wallace was born in Brooklyn on May 21, 1972. He was known by many names such as ‘Biggie Smalls’, ‘Big Poppa’, ‘Frank White’ and the most famous of the all was ‘The Notorious B.I.G.’. He grew popular during the mid-1990s when the gangster rap genre of hip-hop music gained recognition.
Christopher Wallace was an excellent student in school; he studied at the Westinghouse High School in Downtown Brooklyn, alongside future music partners Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes. Wallace grew up during the cocaine endemic in the 1980s. He gave up his studies and became a drug peddler in the Bedford-Stuyvesant region. After Biggie got arrested and was convicted, he decided to start rapping. His first single ‘Party and Bullshit’ got Biggie noticed in the hip-hop scenes. Wallace released his mainstream single ‘Juicy’ in 1994, he then released his first album called ‘Ready To Die’ in the same year. His album release made him the star of the East Coast hip-hop scene; he took over New York’s hip-hop culture which had been following the West Coast hip-hop scene. He was shot dead in his car by an unknown person. It is still unclear who was behind his murder. His second album was released just two weeks after he was killed, it was titled ‘Life After Death’ and it debuted at #1 on the charts, it sold over 10 million albums and is the highest selling hip-hop album till date. The much awaited album, ‘The Notorious B.I.G. Duets: The Final Chapter’ was released on December 20, 2005.
The Notorious B.I.G. was popularly known for his talented storytelling and freestyling, along with his easy to understand nonetheless complicated flow of rhymes. He had also pioneered the idea of not making written notes of his lyrics on paper. Biggie is considered to be one of the greatest rappers of all time both by his fans and peers alike. |
