Yesterday 17 years ago, Christopher Wallace a.k.a. Biggie Smalls was killed leaving a Vibe magazine party in Los Angeles. The greatest rapper of our time had a short lived life that included 3 amazingly lyrical albums, a bunch of number 1 hits and of course great collabs with Jay-Z, Craig Mack, Tupac, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Method Man and Mary J Blige.
As a black girl, growing up in the burbs, listening to Biggie gave me insight on a life I never knew. Brooklyn life, drug slanging and of course I made my parents buy me Coogi and Versace everything. If you were fortunate enough to live during Biggie’s reign, you too learned a few things. Here is our list of things we learned from his lyrics.
Being poor sucks.
Free lunch, no Super Genesis, or Nintendo, creating fake Lacoste shirts and “pullin a kick door” just seems exhausting and not fun. Biggie even admitted that his birthdays were the worst. Growing up in Brooklyn projects gave Wallace his gritty lyrics.
Beef
If you didn’t know what beef was (not that stuff at Burger King, silly), the Notorious Big was nice enough to explain it. Beef is when you need 2 gats to go to sleep or when mom dukes can’t even walk down the street safely. That’s too gangsta for my blood. I can’t imagine my mom not being able to safely go meet with her nutritionist or water her plants in her garden. Wait, is there gardens in the projects?
Self-confidence
One thing to learn from this man, if you didn’t learn anything else was loving yourself even if you don’t look like Brad Pitt. Give Biggie all the chickenheads from Pasadena to Medina. Yes, ALL OF THEM. In many of his lyrics he spoke of having many hoes, while smoking blunts (not laced with angel dust). He taught us that even if your black, fat and ugly as ever, you can stay Coogi down to socks, pop a few bottles of champagne in a hot tub and you too can have any girl you want.
UPS is hiring
Thank you Notorious for letting me know the job market is all-good and if this writing shit gets too strenuous, I can have a career in delivering boxes.
Other jobs
And if that UPS gig doesn’t work out well (or I get tired of wearing those poo brown uniforms) then I have a career in selling crack. Why? Because the biggest thing we ever learned from B.I.G.’s lyrics was the do’s and don’ts on being a successful drug dealer, also know as the “10 Crack Commandments”. You know, don’t get high on your own supply and don’t trust anyone, not even your mom! She will “set that ass up”. Also the number 9 which should have been the number 1 rule, stay away from the po-po! In this situation forget anything you were ever taught about the police. They are bad and if your homies think you’re snitchin they ain’t trying to listen.