After he got out of jail, he made a demo tape as Biggie Smalls - named after a gang leader from the 1975 movie Let's Do It Again also a nod to his childhood nickname.

Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images Bad Boy Recordsīiggie began rapping as a teenager to entertain people in his neighborhood. Scott 'Zimer' Zimmerman and Naoufal 'Rocko' Alaoui's mural of Biggie Smalls in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York In this regard, he was similar to Tupac Shakur, his one-time friend turned bitter rival - a contest that spiraled horrifyingly out of control leaving neither man alive to tell the tale. He styled himself as a gangster and although he was no angel, in reality he was more of a performer than a hardened criminal. With his clear, powerful baritone, effortless flow on the mic and willingness to address the vulnerability, as well as the harshness, of the hustler lifestyle, Smalls swung the spotlight back towards New York and his label home, Bad Boy Records.

Smalls was from New York and had almost single-handedly reinvented East Coast hip hop - overtaken in the early 1990s by the West Coast 'g-funk' sound of Dr. He was 24 years old when he was gunned down in 1997 in Los Angeles, a murder that has never been solved. Who Was Biggie Smalls?Ĭhristopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G., lived a short life. Biggie Smalls, also known as 'The Notorious B.I.G.,' was a revered hip-hop artist and face of East Coast gangsta rap.

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