Notorious B.I.G
Year: 1997; Age: 24
When Biggie Smalls was
murdered during a still-
unsolved drive-by shooting
in Los Angeles, his shocking
death forced the music
industry to change. During his
too-brief life, he had engaged
in an increasingly heated
rivalry with Tupac Shakur; the
latter’s death on September
13, 1996 had not lessened the
rancor surrounding the duo.
Hip-hop culture was being
consumed by street violence,
and record executives seemed
too frightened, or too callous,
to stop it. That began to
change just before Biggie’s
death. Several reconciliation
summits were organized:
Snoop Dogg appeared with
Sean Combs on The Steve
Harvey Show to renounce
any “East Coast-West Coast”
conflict, and Ice Cube and
Common embraced during a
peace summit led by Nation of
Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Most importantly, countless
artists made pains to work
with counterparts from
opposite coasts, including
Dr. Dre’s all-star project “East
Coast/West Coast Killas.”
When Biggie’s final album Life
After Death dropped on March
25, 1997, its overwhelming
success helped dispel some
of the ugliness surrounding
Biggie’s untimely death. It also
cemented his reputation as
one of the most skilled lyricists
of his generation.
The genre may have moved
on while cementing The
Notorious B.I.G. as one of its
greatest heroes. But there is
also Christopher Wallace, a
young man from Brooklyn,
New York whose life was taken
from him far too early. “He
didn’t do nothing to nobody.
Yeah, he had a temper. He
got into fights. But nothing he
should be killed for,” Sean “Puff
Daddy” Combs told Rolling
Stone in 1997. “Nobody can
tell me that just ’cause you a
rapper, at the end of the day
you get killed because you the
flyest rapper? Motherfuckers
are so jealous just ’cause you
the best?” MR
Tupac Shakur
Year: 1996; Age: 25
Tupac Shakur had
encountered brushes with
death years before he was
murdered. In the midst of a
1994 trial for sexual assault,
he was shot five times by
unknown assailants at Quad
Studios in New York City. The
next day, he was found guilty
on numerous counts, leading
fans to believe that his career
– and his time in the public eye
– was over. (While in prison,
he released 1995’s Me Against
the World.) Several months
later, he was bigger than ever,
thanks to his multi-platinum
All Eyez on Me. Throughout,
his powerful, incendiary raps
captured the joys and pain of a
young man struggling to make
sense of his life.
The period when he was shot
– from being gunned down in
a hail of bullets on September
iconz
iconz magazine
7, 1996 in Las Vegas to
expiring in a nearby hospital a
week later– remains shrouded
in controversy. It has yielded
true-crime books, tell-alls from
close friends and tangential
figures, defamatory claims,
and conspiracy theories.
For years afterward, many
believed that he was still alive,
perhaps inspired by his final
posthumous album under the
Makaveli alias, Don Killuminati:
The 7 Day Theory. “He was
like, ‘I don’t see myself growing
old’,” Treach from Naughty
By Nature told MTV News in
2010. Even today, two decades
after his death, he remains one
of the most popular rappers
in the world. Given that, his
physical absence seems
unreal. MR
“He was
like, ‘I don’t
see myself
”
growing old’,