Last weekend was an event filled weekend. With the Billboard Music Awards getting most of the attention, it’s easy to miss the fact that another one off event took place in Brooklyn, New York: A tribute to rapper Notorious B.I.G.
If he were still alive, he would’ve turned 44 on May 21st, but someone put a sudden end to his life on March 9th 1997.
As a rapper, he had a way of turning rough rap lyrics into easy listening. They often talk about having a flow in rap, which is easy to confuse with having a sense of timing. But it’s a combination of that with your intonation. Biggie made it sound effortless. It was like it was the easiest thing for him to rap, but more importantly, he made it the easiest thing to listen to too.
It helped him along that R&B and Hip Hop music became softer from the middle to the end of the 90s. And he didn’t hesitate to help his old friends to be part of it all.
I’m guessing that it must have been 1996, when I met him, Lil Kim and the Junior M.A.F.I.A. very briefly. They were in Rotterdam for an R&B event and I was there to meet some of the other groups, who were performing at the same event.
Meeting them was just one of those weird moments, where you didn’t even realize that two completely different worlds met. Out of everyone there, I turned out to be the only one who actually knew the track “Get Money” from the Junior M.A.F.I.A. It was just a crazy thing for everyone there to comprehend, that most unlikely person, the white good girl, actually knew their music.
But the meeting very quickly became one of those encounters you appreciated more (and took a photo of), because it was just a few months later when Biggie was killed. From where I stand, music is pretty harmless, so you just don’t expect that.
In his brief life and career, Biggie Smalls made quite an impression. Enough for the city of Brooklyn to declare May 21st 2016 as the official Notorious B.I.G. Day. The honor was presented to his daughter and rapper Lil Cease, while, elsewhere in the city, most of the Bad Boys family reunited for a concert in his honor. Puff Daddy, Mase, Lil Kim, The Lox, Mary J Blige, 112, Total, Faith Evans and more were announced for the gig, but Jay Z and Nas also turned up.
While this show was a one-time only event, the Bad Boy line up will actually hit the road again in August 2016 for a full blown tour, with a hologram of Notorious B.I.G. Next year, it'll be 20 years ago that he died.
