If there’s one aspect of Notorious B.I.G.’s legend that’s fallen through the cracks more than any other these last 20 years, though, it was his titanic fortitude as a team player in rap. There isn’t a hint of worry about his upcoming trip to Los Angeles for fear of retaliation for Shakur’s killing, an event that, as actor Jamal Woolard so poignantly portrayed in the 2009 film Notorious, broke his heart. What we see in that photograph of Biggie, his face all business, the golden crown tipping off the top of his head, is the undisputed King of Brooklyn hip-hop looking ready to conquer the world. He had to die for this image to have that symbolism. The fact that he died made the symbolism stronger. The image is very stripped down, you only see his face. ” “When you see something different, you embrace it.
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You rarely seem them as regal,” Clairborne told the magazine for its series “ Contact High: The Stories Behind Hip Hop’s Most Iconic Photographs. “There are images of black people, rappers or not, that you don’t see in American culture. (The image came from a session Wallace did with photographer Barron Clairborne for Mass Appeal three days before his murder.) Nothing personifies that more than the portrait of Biggie hanging on the wall of Cottonmouth’s office at Harlem’s Paradise on the Netflix Marvel series Luke Cage. But the man had so much more to offer this world. His sole pair of proper LPs, Ready to Die and Life After Death, are both essential listens for any hip-hop fan who appreciates the soul of the art form. Like Kurt Cobain before him, Biggie left a scant catalog of music in his wake that only scratched the surface of his capabilities as a performer. So large is his legend that you can’t help but imagine how the hip-hop landscape might look today had Biggie not gotten into that Chevy Suburban the night of Ma(a truck that is now being sold online for $1.5 million, according to The Daily Beast). These days, Biggie’s spoken of in the same light as such beloved big men in pop as Barry White, Charles Mingus and Clarence Clemons, a larger-than-life figure with a personality that eschews any language and lifestyle foibles he experienced here on Earth. His infamous swagger and masterful grasp of the rhythm of language have transformed him into a pop culture icon in a way that’s transcended the misogyny and violence that oftentimes salted his sound. Even in a genre riddled with cold case murders of some of its most respected pioneers-Boogie Down Productions’ Scott La Rock, Big L from the DITC crew, Jam Master Jay of Run DMC, and, of course, Tupac Shakur, whose assassination on Septemmany see as the catalyst for the killing of the man born Christopher Wallace-the death of Biggie, and his legend, still cast a shadow over all of modern rap today.
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