![]() ![]() making room for his label head hat next to the tilted crown on his head? Would he still have the crown? Would the crown matter more? Could he have surprised us and gone the mogul route, following in Puff’s footsteps? Would TIDAL be his? Would Kendrick have dared call himself the king of New York on his “Control” verse? B.I.G. had grown into a full-fledged imprint with B.I.G. Would he actually dead 90% of the rappers out now? Would he bless a certain few with features because he wanted them to receive the torch he passed? Would Junior M.A.F.I.A. ![]() It’s easy to hypothesize about what kind of rapper Biggie would be today. was alive 90% of rappers today would be working at McDonalds.” After getting over the alarmingly reductive options that presents for young black wordsmiths, I wondered if it was true. I cant believe this just happened!! #wemissyouBIG GOD IS THE GREATEST BIG FOREVER!!! Thank you /25gxlt9jamĪ particular T-shirt a fellow train passenger wore sparked more contemplation in me than any of the gestures I witnessed or described above. ![]() Through gestures big and small, fans celebrated his legacy in any way they saw fit, even with something as simple as a T-shirt, and everything felt right, mostly. Pieces about the significance of his life, death, music and legacy popped up all over the interwebs from the same publications that covered him two decades ago and many more. In ”Miss U,” an innocent victim is killed after a gunman ”squeezed all six shots in the passenger door.” (Smalls, 24, died after several shots were fired into the passenger side of a car.) ”Your destiny is something you can never figure out,” goes a line in ”Last Day,” yet throughout the album, Biggie either taunts fate or seems resigned to it.Throughout the Bedford-Stuyvesant streets where Biggie grew up, candle-lit vigils flickered, freshly painted murals glistened on walls, Coogi sweaters were popping again, and his music wafted through the air as if a part of earth’s atmospheric makeup on his Fulton St. in ”Going Back to Cali,” he sings, ”That don’t mean a nigger can’t rest in the West.” L.A., of course, is where the Brooklyn-based Biggie was killed, and such disturbing ironies abound. ”You wanna see me locked up, shot up/Moms cracked up over the casket screaming,” Biggie tells his enemies in ”My Downfall.” Visiting L.A. ![]() or Biggie Smalls), Life After Death is the eeriest disc yet in the unfortunately booming subgenre of posthumous rap records. Completed just weeks before the March 9 drive-by shooting death of Christopher Wallace (otherwise known as the Notorious B.I.G. Of course, the album isn’t standard gangsta fare, either. ![]()
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