Remembering Biggie

On this day 14 years ago, rapper Biggie Smalls, AKA The Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in L.A. He was only 24 years old when he was killed, but over the course of his short career he had already topped the rap charts and become known as one of the major players on the East Coast rap scene. Since his death, Biggie has been sampled by scores of artists, been the subject of a film chronicling his life, and sold 17 million albums in the U.S. alone. In 2006, MTV ranked him number three on a list of the greatest MC’s of all time.

To this day, Biggie’s technique and voice go unmatched. He developed his deep, throaty style when he was still a kid growing up in Brooklyn and went by the name Chris Wallace. He asked his neighbor Donald Harrison, who was a jazz saxophonist, to give him music lessons. Harrison introduced him to Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald and taught him how to scat. You can hear the influence in his music: he raps his lyrics in a staccato, pronounced manner, but the effect is smooth and lyrical.

Despite his natural talent, Biggie didn’t always imagine himself becoming a rapper. He excelled in school and had hopes of going to college and becoming a doctor or a lawyer. But the pull of the streets proved too tempting. At the age of 16 he dropped out of high school and started selling drugs. He continued to work on his music, though, and was signed by rapper Puff Daddy after he heard Biggie’s mixtape through Source magazine’s Unsigned Hype column. His career took off from there, and although he only made two albums while he was alive, Biggie was beginning to push the limits of the genre. Most agree that Biggie’s greatest strength was his flow. which the rapper AZ describes like this: "flow is like water. It's like current. It's the fluidity of your words — and how you can slow it up, pick it up, chop it up. You can take a slow beat and flow fast on it because it's the structure of the words. Or you could take a fast beat and really screw it up and make it slow. Flow is a beautiful thing."

Biggie certainly had it. He matched his words to the beat, going slow enough so people could hear what he was saying. He was telling stories and he wanted people to listen. His lyricism is still lauded by rappers who sample his songs and try to emulate his style, but Biggie’s originality can’t be rivaled. In Mo Money Mo Problems Biggie raps, “I just speak my piece, keep my peace.” Indeed, he was rapping about what he knew. Even though much of it was street lore, it wasn’t the same as the braggadocio that some rappers today carry on with. Biggie could always back it up.