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And the MCs' grim premonitions stemmed more from bravado than a genuine death wish. Despite numerous competing theories, nobody has ever been prosecuted for either murder, and there's no evidence that the feud directly led to the killings. "Fear got stronger than love, and niggas did things they weren't supposed to do," Tupac ominously told Vibe magazine.īut this is where the myth risks overtaking reality. Old-fashioned territorial rivalry, a familiar and largely harmless theme in hip-hop, blossomed into a more dangerous vendetta between the east and west coast factions, stoked by lyrical provocations from Biggie (Who Shot Ya?) and Tupac (Hit 'Em Up). After serving almost a year in jail for sexual abuse, he signed with Death Row, whose shady kingpin Suge Knight had his own grudge against Combs. He suspected Biggie and his mentor, Sean "Puffy" Combs, of arranging the shooting. They were on good terms until Tupac was shot five times in a Manhattan recording studio on 30 November 1994. They both thought big: hip-hop heroes for the mainstream rather than the cognoscenti.
LIFE AFTER DEATH BIGGIE ALBUM ART CRACK
Biggie had the gangster credentials (he used to deal crack in Brooklyn), everyman appeal and effortless, weighty-but-nimble flow - to him, rapping itself was sheer poetry. Tupac had the good looks, revolutionary heritage (his mother was former Black Panther Afeni Shakur) and poetic aspirations, but only middling skills. Tupac worked on the west coast, Biggie on the east. They were born less than a year apart: Tupac in 1971, Biggie (aka Christopher Wallace) in 1972. The two murders, both still unsolved, comprise the defining drama in the history of hip-hop.įrom the start, the two men's vexed relationship had an enthralling yin-yang quality. Just months earlier, his bitter rival Tupac Shakur had also been shot dead, and his own posthumously released final album, The Don Killuminati: the 7 Day Theory, was rife with paranoia and fodder for conspiracy theories. When Notorious BIG closed his second album, 1997's Life After Death, with the track You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You), and was promptly murdered just weeks before its release, hip-hop's characteristic blurring of life and art reached its grisly apotheosis. T he only thing more powerful than a premature death is a death foretold.