We’re ganna throw it back again to, yet another, old soul who influenced hip hop to become what it is today. Christopher George Latore Wallace. More commonly known as Biggie, Biggie smalls, or The Notorious B.I.G. If you’re wondering how he got his name, it’s really as simple as it sounds. His childhood friends nicknamed him “Big” for being, well..chunkier than the others. It was also the name of a gang leader character in Let’s Do It Again. Smalls was from New York and had almost single-handedly reinvented East Coast hip hop. His raps were mainly focused on the vulnerabilities and difficulties of the hustler lifestyle he was sort of born into.

He began getting involved in this lifestyle fairly early. He began selling drugs around the age of 12 near his mom’s apartment since she would be working most of the day. He would eventually quit school to pursue this lifestyle and make it permanent. However, it wouldn’t be long before he started getting in trouble with the law. He received various probationary sentences for drug dealing, weapons-possession charges and such things.

Biggie began rapping a little later, as a teenager, to entertain people in his neighborhood. Once he got out of jail for the various charges, he made his first demo tape under his new name, Biggie Smalls. Although he had no intentions of pursuing a career in music initially, once The Source magazine got a hold of his raps and was impressed by them, they profiled Biggie in the Unsigned Hype column in March 1992. From there Biggie quickly noticed the interest people took in his music and the potential a music career had. Biggie was invited to record with various other unsigned rappers. Eventually, he would join Bad Boy Records and shoot to fame. He styled himself as a gangster and rapped about that lifestyle. Although he was no angel, I think Biggie was a lot like Tupac, in that he had he was just trying to make the best out of the life he was given. He did not have much of a choice but to get involved in the dangerous lifestyle at the time in New York. Tupac and Biggie were actually good friends until they had a fall out which would turn them against each other.

Biggie was one of the OG’s that definitely lived a life way too short. He was merely 24 years old when he was gunned down in 1997 in Los Angeles. Just like the mysteries surrounding Tupacs death, the specifics of Biggie’s death are still murky.