The Notorious B.I.G.

Christopher George Latore Wallace, known as The Notorious B.I.G. and also as Biggie Smalls, was born May 21, 1972, and raised in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood^[1]. His mother, Voletta Wallace, a Jamaican-born preschool teacher, raised him largely on her own after his father left the family when he was a toddler, working multiple jobs to support the household^[2]. By his own account, Wallace began dealing drugs on his block around age twelve, drawn into the street economy of Fulton Street well before he had any path toward a music career^[2]. Despite that, he was an honor-roll student at Westinghouse High School before dropping out at sixteen, and he was arrested on weapons charges in 1989 and again for drug distribution in 1991^[1].

He signed with Sean "Puffy" Combs's newly formed Bad Boy Records in 1993, becoming the label's first artist^[1]. His 1994 debut album, Ready to Die, paired vivid, unflinching street narratives with radio hits and is widely credited with helping revive New York's East Coast hip hop scene at a moment when West Coast artists dominated the charts^[1].

Wallace spent nearly two years assembling a sprawling double-disc follow-up, Life After Death, recording at Daddy's House Recording Studios in New York and at Caribbean Sound Basin in Trinidad. Work on the record was slowed at one point by a serious car accident he survived in 1996^[3]. On March 9, 1997, Wallace was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting while visiting Los Angeles, at age twenty-four; Life After Death followed just sixteen days later^[1][3].

He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, and Life After Death remains regarded as one of the most significant albums in hip hop history^[1][3].