The Notorious B.I.G.

Voletta Wallace taught preschool, worked a second job, and did not learn until her son was 20 that he had been selling drugs since he was about 12 and hiding the money on the roof. His father, a welder, left three months before Wallace turned three. He grew up in Clinton Hill on the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant, went to Catholic school, graduated from the parish elementary at St. Peter Claver, and excelled in English. He was an honor student when he dropped out at 16, into a crack trade that was already everywhere around him. Brooklyn arrested him on weapons charges in 1989. North Carolina arrested him in 1991 for selling crack, and he spent nine months in jail before making bail.

Out of jail he made a demo with a neighborhood DJ named 50 Grand and expected little from it. Mister Cee sent it to The Source, which ran him in Unsigned Hype in March 1992. Sean Combs read the column and sent for him. Combs signed him to Uptown, was fired, founded Bad Boy, and took him along. Ready to Die came out on September 13, 1994 and sold 500,000 copies in a week. He built Junior M.A.F.I.A. around childhood friends, Lil' Kim among them. There was one more album, and two is the whole recorded career.

He did not write lyrics down. Verses were assembled in his head and held there, and what they contain is what other rappers still take apart: rhymes stacked three and four deep inside a bar instead of parked at the end of it, so the pattern lands where the beat does not mark it. He rapped in a baritone Rolling Stone called a thick, jaunty grumble, and he rapped behind the beat, dragging syllables late and catching up, which is why a very dense scheme sounds unhurried. On Notorious Thugs he dropped the method and matched Bone Thugs-n-Harmony triplet for triplet. The New York Times noted the other half: the crime in the songs was exaggerated on purpose, by a better storyteller than witness.

The quarrel with Tupac Shakur, a friend before it went wrong, was reported as a war between coasts, a frame the press built. Shakur was killed in September 1996. Wallace was shot at a red light in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, at 24. Both killings are unsolved, and nobody has ever been charged in his. The LAPD investigation has been reopened and criticized repeatedly, once collapsing into a mistrial over evidence found in a detective's desk. Life After Death arrived 16 days after he died, went to number one, and was certified diamond. Brooklyn renamed a corner of Fulton Street for him in 2019, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took him in 2020.

The Notorious B.I.G.'s life against the full span of the corpus.

• Ready to Die album
  Recorded at the Hit Factory and sold 500,000 copies in its first week 1994
• Juicy song
  His first solo pop hit, issued as a double A-side with Unbelievable 1994
• Big Poppa song
  Topped the US rap chart and carried Who Shot Ya on its B-side 1994
• Life After Death album
  A double album released 16 days after he was killed, later certified diamond 1997
• Hypnotize song
  Released March 4, 1997, five days before his death, and later number one 1997
• Mo Money Mo Problems song
  His second posthumous number one, the first time any artist had two 1997

• May 21, 1972 aged 0 Born at Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn, the only child of Jamaican immigrants His mother Voletta taught preschool. His father, a welder, left three months before his third birthday.
• 1989 aged ~17 Arrested in Brooklyn on weapons charges and sentenced to five years probation
• 1991 aged ~19 Arrested in North Carolina for dealing crack and held nine months before bail Back in Brooklyn he cut a demo tape, Microphone Murderer, with the DJ 50 Grand.
• March 1992 aged 19 The Source runs the demo in its Unsigned Hype column Mister Cee had passed the tape along. Sean Combs read the column and arranged to meet him.
• August 4, 1994 aged 22 Marries the singer Faith Evans, two months after meeting her at a photoshoot
• September 13, 1994 aged 22 Ready to Die is released on Bad Boy Records It sold 500,000 copies in its first week and pulled attention back to East Coast rap.
• November 30, 1994 aged 22 Tupac Shakur is shot and robbed in the lobby of a studio where Wallace was recording Shakur later accused Wallace and Combs of prior knowledge. Both denied it, and no evidence ever supported it.
• March 9, 1997 aged 24 Shot at a red light in Los Angeles and pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. He was 24. The case remains officially unsolved and nobody has been charged.

• Tupac Shakur 1971–1996
  Rapper and actor whose work and persona became enduring symbols of hip-hop’s social and personal tensions. friend then rival
• Jay-Z b. 1969
  Rapper and entrepreneur whose career helped move hip-hop from a subculture to the center of American business and culture. recorded Brooklyn's Finest with
• Eminem b. 1972
  Best-selling rapper in history, and the one who forced the argument about who hip-hop belongs to. guested on his posthumous album
• Kendrick Lamar b. 1987
  Rapper whose albums won a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Grammy Awards. influenced
• Michael Jackson 1958–2009
  Performer whose recordings, choreography, and music videos redefined global pop stardom. featured on two of his albums