Note: Please forgive me for not posting this on March 9th. I went back and forth over whether or not I could do the subject justice. I hope I achieved that goal to some degree.
As a kid I used to wonder how it was that the grown folk could recall exactly where they were and what they were doing the day Marvin Gaye, Elvis,or some other famous entertainer died. It was hard for me to fathom that someone I didn’t know personally could make that much of an impression on my life. I would eventually learn how wrong I was.
I fell in love with hip hop at an early on, but my formal coming of age with the genre came during the early to mid 90′s, what I call the second Golden Era of Hip Hop. I got to witness the Wu & Boot Camp Clik enter the game, the rise of Death Row, Bad Boy, Roc-A-Fella, & No Limit, and I got to hear producers like RZA, Preemo, Dr.Dre, & Organized Noize in their prime. Needless to say, it was a good time for hip hop. Arguably, there were no two bigger names during this time than Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. If you’re interested enough to read this I likely don’t have to run down their bios or chronicle their strange journey from fast friends to mortal enemies. It’s unfair to lump Biggie and Pac with hip hop music’s other beefs. This was two great MC’s in their prime. This was the two most powerful labels in the genre at the point. This was coast vs. coast. Pac declaring that Biggie set up the botched robbery at Quad Studios that left him with multiple gunshot wounds. “Who Shot Ya”(though Biggie denied the song was about Pac) vs. Hit ‘Em Up. In other words, this was very PERSONAL.
Everyone took a side and I was no different. I loved Pac but I revered Christopher Wallace. I felt like I got to know him personally through his music. He was clever with the wordplay, a vivid storyteller, charismatic, and had a mischievous sense of humor I could appreciate. I never once believed Biggie set Pac up and while B.I.G. mostly tried to take the high road, Pac never stopped firing, even hinting at sleeping with Faith Evans. I remember wishing Pac could tone down the vitriol and the two could have a dialogue, but it wasn’t in Pac’s nature and Suge Knight was all too eager to fan the flames. Then it all changed. Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Vegas.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was standing in an elevator at Virginia Commonwealth University waiting on some friends when one of them bolted in and somberly told us about Pac’s death. I was devastated and torn up inside, but I shocked everyone by my passive response. I had been angry with him for so long that I couldn’t even express my grief properly. When I did come to grips with things, I remember thinking that if any good would come out of Pac’s death maybe B.I.G. could move on and losing someone this prominent would move us all away from violence and death. Little did I know……
It was Sunday and I was in Norfolk for the weekend. I hadn’t watched much TV and word didn’t travel via the internet then the way it does now so I had no clue. I was standing in a Econo Lodge bathroom with my ever present Walkman on my hip. I turned on 103 Jamz to hear the Boodah Brothers(RIP DJ LAW) on the air at an unusual time. Finally I discovered the reason: we had lost Christopher Wallace less than a year after Tupac. I’m not one to write for dramatic effect, so when I say I went numb, my heart raced, and I couldn’t even force out a single word I couldn’t be more sincere. Hearing of my beloved grandmother’s death and watching the Twin Towers fall may be the only other times I felt that way, though Aaliyah’s death comes close. To this day, many folks have never gotten over that feeling at that moment. We truly felt like we lost a family member. Even fourteen years later, just writing this piece overwhelms me with sadness. He was at the top and yet had so much untapped potential. There are so many questions that will never be answered. How big could his career have been? How many more classic records would we have gotten? How would the career trajectory of artists associated with him like Lil’ Kim or Lil’ Cease have been different? With all the botched investigative work we may never know who really killed Biggie. Honestly that almost seems irrelevant now, now though I would love to see the murder solved if only to give his mother peace. Really though, the only thing that would soothe most of our souls would be to wake up and have it all have been a long horrible nightmare. Life doesn’t work that way though, so we do our best to hold on to the memories as time passes. All I know is that I look forward to the day I can pull out Ready To Die and Life After Death and play it for my kids and tell them about the legend that was Christopher Wallace.
on