The Notorious B.I.G. facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The Notorious B.I.G.
Wallace in 1995
Born	Christopher George Latore Wallace (1972-05-21)May 21, 1972 New York City, U.S.
Died	March 9, 1997(1997-03-09) (aged 24) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Cremated, ashes given to family members
Other names	Biggie Smalls Biggie Big Frank White Big Poppa MC CWest
Occupation	Rapper songwriter
Years active	1992–1997
Spouse(s)	Faith Evans ​ (m. 1994)​
Children	2, including C. J.
Awards	Full list
Musical career
Genres	Hip hop gangsta rap East Coast hip hop
Labels	Atlantic Arista Bad Boy Uptown
Associated acts	Junior M.A.F.I.A. The Commission Faith Evans Mister Cee Puff Daddy

Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), better known by his stage names the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or simply Biggie, was an American rapper and songwriter. Rooted in the New York rap scene and gangsta rap traditions, he is widely considered one of the greatest rappers of all time.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, Wallace signed to Sean "Puffy" Combs' label Bad Boy Records as it launched in 1993, and gained exposure through features on several other artists' singles that year. His debut album was met with widespread critical acclaim in 1994, and included his signature songs "Juicy" and "Big Poppa". The album made him the central figure in East Coast hip hop, and restored New York's visibility at a time when the West Coast hip hop scene was dominating hip hop music. Wallace was awarded the 1995 Billboard Music Awards' Rapper of the Year. The following year, he led his protégé group Junior M.A.F.I.A., a team of himself and longtime friends, including Lil' Kim, to chart success.

On March 9, 1997, while visiting Los Angeles, Wallace was murdered in a drive-by shooting. The assailant remains unidentified. Wallace's second album Life After Death, a double album, was released two weeks later. It reached number one on the Billboard 200, and eventually achieved a Diamond certification in the US.

With two more posthumous albums released, Wallace has certified sales of over 28 million copies in the United States, including 21 million albums. Rolling Stone has called him the "greatest rapper that ever lived," and Billboard named him the greatest rapper of all time. The Source magazine named him the greatest rapper of all time in its 150th issue. In 2006, MTV ranked him at No. 3 on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time, calling him possibly "the most skillful ever on the mic". In 2020, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Early life

Early life

Christopher George Latore Wallace was born at St. Mary's Hospital in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on May 21, 1972, the only child of Jamaican immigrant parents. His mother, Voletta Wallace, was a preschool teacher, while his father, Selwyn George Latore, was a welder and politician. His father left the family when Wallace was two years old, and his mother worked two jobs while raising him. Wallace grew up at 226 St. James Place in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill, near the border with Bedford-Stuyvesant. Raised Catholic, Wallace excelled at Queen of All Saints Middle School, winning several awards as an English student. He attended St Peter Claver Church in the borough. He was nicknamed "Big" because he was overweight by the age of 10.

He began rapping as a teenager, entertaining people on the streets, and performed with local groups, the Old Gold Brothers as well as the Techniques. His earliest stage name was MC CWest. He also received tutelage in jazz from saxophonist Donald Harrison, who lived nearby. Wallace requested to transfer from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Fort Greene to George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School in Downtown Brooklyn, which future rappers Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes were also attending. According to his mother, Wallace was a good student. At age 17 in 1989, Wallace dropped out of high school and became more involved in crime. That same year in 1989, he was arrested in Brooklyn and sentenced to five years' probation. In 1990, he was arrested on a violation of his probation. A year later, Wallace was arrested in North Carolina. He spent nine months in jail before making bail.

Musical style

Vocals

Wallace mostly rapped in a deep tone described by Rolling Stone as a "thick, jaunty grumble", which went even deeper on Life After Death. He was often accompanied on songs with ad libs from Sean "Puffy" Combs. In The Source's "Unsigned Hype" column, his style was described as "cool, nasal, and filtered, to bless his own material". AllMusic described Wallace as having "a talent for piling multiple rhymes on top of one another in quick succession".

Time magazine wrote that he rapped with an ability to "make multi-syllabic rhymes sound smooth", while Krims described his rhythmic style as "effusive". Before starting a verse, Wallace sometimes used onomatopoeic vocables to warm up his voice, for example "uhhh" at the beginning of "Hypnotize" and "Big Poppa", and "what" after certain rhymes in songs such as "My Downfall".

Lateef of Latyrx notes that Wallace had "intense and complex flows". Fredro Starr of Onyx said that he was "a master of the flow", and Bishop Lamont stated that he mastered "all the hemispheres of the music". Wallace also often used the single-line rhyme scheme to add variety and interest to his flow. Big Daddy Kane suggested that Wallace did not need a large vocabulary to impress listeners, stating that he "just put his words together a slick way and it worked real good for him".

Wallace was known to compose lyrics in his head rather than write them down on paper, in a similar way to Jay-Z. He would occasionally vary from his usual style. On "Playa Hater", he sang in a slow falsetto. On "Notorious Thugs", his collaboration with Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, he modified his style to match the rapid rhyme flow of the group.

Legacy

Graffiti of the Notorious B.I.G.

A mural in Brooklyn

A stencil of the Notorious B.I.G. in Asakusa, Tokyo

Considered one of the greatest rappers of all time, Wallace was described by AllMusic as "the savior of East Coast hip-hop". The Source magazine named him the greatest rapper of all time in its 150th issue in 2002. In 2003, when XXL magazine asked several hip hop artists to list their five favorite MCs, Wallace appeared on more rappers' lists than anyone else. In 2006, MTV ranked him at No. 3 on their list of The Greatest MCs of All Time, calling him possibly "the most skillful ever on the mic".

Editors of About.com ranked him at No. 3 on their list of the Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007). In 2012, The Source ranked him No. 3 on their list of the Top 50 Lyrical Leaders of all time. Rolling Stone has referred to him as the "greatest rapper that ever lived". In 2015, Billboard named Wallace as the greatest rapper of all time.

Wallace's lyrics have been sampled and quoted by a variety of artists, including Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Alicia Keys, Fat Joe, Nelly, Ja Rule, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Game, Clinton Sparks, Michael Jackson, and Usher. At the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards, Combs and Snoop Dogg paid tribute to Wallace by hiring an orchestra to play while the vocals from "Juicy" and "Warning" played on the arena speakers. At the 2005 VH1 Hip Hop Honors, a tribute to Wallace headlined the show.

Wallace had begun to promote a clothing line called Brooklyn Mint, which was to produce plus-sized clothing, but it fell dormant after he died. In 2004, his managers Mark Pitts and Wayne Barrow launched the clothing line with help from Jay-Z, selling T-shirts with images of Wallace on them. A portion of the proceeds go to the Christopher Wallace Foundation and to Jay-Z's Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation. In 2005, Voletta Wallace hired branding and licensing agency Wicked Cow Entertainment to guide the estate's licensing efforts. Wallace-branded products on the market include action figures, blankets, and cell phone content.

The Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation holds an annual black-tie dinner ("B.I.G. Night Out") to raise funds for children's school equipment and to honor Wallace's memory. For this particular event, because it is a children's schools' charity, "B.I.G." is also said to stand for "Books Instead of Guns".

There is a large portrait mural of Wallace as Mao Zedong on Fulton Street in Brooklyn a half-mile west from Wallace's old block. A fan petitioned to have the corner of Fulton Street and St. James Place, near Wallace's childhood home renamed in his honor, garnering support from local businesses and attracting more than 560 signatures.

A large portrait of Wallace features prominently in the Netflix series Luke Cage, due to the fact that he served as muse for the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of Marvel Comics character Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes.

In 2018, a movie chronicling LAPD detective Russell Poole's investigation of Wallace's murder was released. City of Lies is based on journalist Randall Sullivan's book "LAbrynith" and explores the corruption and cover-ups within LAPD that surround Wallace's case. Voletta Wallace believed that Poole was honest and wasn't given the chance to do his job. She supported the movie by appearing as herself.

In August 2020, Wallace's son, C.J., released a house remix of his father's hit "Big Poppa".

A March 2021 Netflix documentary Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, executive-produced by Voletta Wallace and Combs, focuses on B.I.G.'s life before he rose to fame as "The King of New York", and features "unprecedented access granted by the Wallace estate".

Biopic

Notorious is a 2009 biographical film about Wallace and his life that stars rapper Jamal Woolard as Wallace. The film was directed by George Tillman Jr. and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Producers included Sean Combs, Wallace's former managers Wayne Barrow and Mark Pitts, as well as Voletta Wallace. The film received mixed reviews and grossed over $44 million worldwide.

Discography

Studio albums

• Ready to Die (1994)
• Life After Death (1997)

Collaboration album

• Conspiracy with Junior M.A.F.I.A. (1995)

Posthumous collaboration album

• The King & I with Faith Evans (2017)

Posthumous compilation albums

• Born Again (1999)
• Duets: The Final Chapter (2005)

Media

Filmography

• The Show (1995) as himself
• Rhyme & Reason (1997 documentary) as himself
• Biggie & Tupac (2002 documentary) archive footage
• Tupac Resurrection (2004 documentary) archive footage
• Notorious B.I.G. Bigger Than Life (2007 documentary) archive footage
• Notorious (2009) archive footage
• All Eyez on Me (2017) archive footage
• Quincy (2018 documentary) archive footage
• Biggie: The Life of Notorious B.I.G. (2017 documentary) archive footage
• Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell (2021 documentary) archive footage
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023) archive footage

Television appearances

• New York Undercover (1995) as himself
• Martin (1995) as himself
• Who Shot Biggie & Tupac? (2017) archive footage
• Unsolved (2018) archive footage

Awards and nominations

See also

In Spanish: The Notorious B.I.G. para niños