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Christopher Wallace [The Notorious B.I.G./The King of New York/Biggie Smalls/Big Poppa] 

was an American rapper born to Voletta Wallace, a preschool teacher, on May 21^st, 1972, in the poor Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. In his early years – though interested in the ever-growing culture of music and rap – Chris Wallace worked hard in the classroom. As a young boy, Wallace dreamt of becoming a graphic artist and was an honor student. Years later, when asked, his mother recalled having “the awards to prove it.”

                Though always having been a good student, Chris Wallace loved rapping and had been partaking in the rap culture since a young age. Continuing to rap with local groups like the Techniques and the Old Gold Brothers, Chris Wallace, being 6 foot 3 inches tall and weighing in around 400 pounds, cleverly adopted the name “Biggie Smalls” before later realizing the name “Biggy Smalls” was already in use. Rapping went hand in hand with exposure to the harsh life of the streets of Bed-Stuy. As Chris reached his teenage years, he became almost infatuated with the money and flashy lifestyle of the local drug-dealers. Although a good student, he dropped out of school (Wallace attended the same high school at the same time as Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes) at the age of seventeen to live a life on the streets. Immediately after leaving his earlier life behind, Chris Wallace became a crack dealer. Wallace’s crack-dealing career was short lived, as he was arrested on a trip to North Carolina in 1991 and spent a total of nine months in jail. Nine months later – from that North Carolina jail cell – one of the greatest rappers of all time was born.

                Upon his release, Wallace borrowed a friend’s four-track tape recorder and laid down some tracks he had written in his head while incarcerated. After this, the tapes were then passed around to, and played, at local radio stations. Sean Combs [Puffy] was sent a copy of the tape and upon hearing, he said, “I just kept rewinding and rewinding it. I had to meet him.” Shortly after meeting him, Puffy signed Christopher Wallace to Bad Boy Records and, without delay, began putting him on other artists’ tracks in an attempt to get his sound heard.

                Christopher Wallace was a huge success. The Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, ironically named “Ready to Die,” was an enormous success due to Wallace’s ability to give the listener an honest, first-person look into his material. Wallace’s songs are often talked about as semi-autobiographical narratives with finer writing and a cinematic style that is still talked about today as something that all together changed hip-hop. The people of RapGenius credit the Notorious B.I.G., (and especially "Ready to Die") along with the Wu Tang Clan, and Nas, to the beginnings of the Modern Era of Rap.

“Juicy,” a song Wallace originally contemplated releasing without the skit at the beginning, went gold within weeks and was a Billboard Top 5 Rap Single. The skit at the beginning of “Juicy” is a prime example of Wallace’s ability, as an artist, to command the listener’s attention by rapping in a cinematic fashion.

“Yeah, this album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I’d never amount to nothin’,

to all the people that lived above the buildings I was hustlin’ in front of that called the police on me

when I was just tryna make some money to feed my daughters, and all the niggas in the struggle.”

This lyric, though simple to most, is easily the most famous and thought-provoking. 

"We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us. No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us. 

Birthdays was the worst days, now we sippin' champagne when we thirst-ay. 

Uh, damn right I like the life I live, cuz I went from negative to positive."

Lines like these make it easy to understand the greatness so many people saw, and still see, in the Notorious B.I.G. Anyone can rap about the struggle they come from and even make a listener feel bad for them. Biggie both pulls at heart strings and cleverly makes the listener aware. When he was young, birthdays weren't anything to look forward to...you made it another year in the hood, but you still had no way of celebrating. Now, going "from negative to positive," instead of drinking champagne - a more celebratory beverage - on special occasions, Wallace can now afford to drink champagne whenever he's thirsty.