I’m getting more money now,” Big said, months after Ready to Die dropped. “One thing I learned about the game is when you get a lot of money, niggas don’t like you. He was too well-known, too successful, and too hot. But that was before the money started piling in, his face was on TV every day, and his voice saturated radio stations from Brooklyn to Long Beach and everywhere in between. He once spoke of never seeing himself leaving his hood because he wondered how it would impact his music. He’d always love Brooklyn, and he’d rep the borough until his last breath. How he understood his place in Brooklyn was changing, too. It was close enough to New York, but far enough away that life could be different. Per The New York Times in 1994, he decided to move his mother into a house in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She had her own life in America, and she wanted to stay close to Brooklyn. Voletta wasn’t necessarily interested in that. He wanted his mother to move to Florida, because it was the closest he could get her to Jamaica. Now that he was making money (and money that couldn’t be tied back to selling crack), he wanted to make her life better. His life was a whirlwind at the moment, but he always remembered that it was Voletta who loved him first. If I have a question about my money at five o’clock in the morning, I’m calling my accountant like, ‘How much money I got?’” “Ma, I’ll never be poor again,” her son said. She had read about this rapper named MC Hammer who amassed such a massive fortune and lost it all. Satisfaction in the present meant nothing if it came with headaches in the future. But she wanted to make sure he was being careful with the money he was making. Voletta Wallace was happy her son was doing what made him happy and she didn’t have to worry about him. “I look at y’all as my customers,” he said. The music game wasn’t all that different from the drug game. Now people all over the country of all races and backgrounds were rapping his words and idolizing his every move. Less than three years earlier, he was selling crack in North Carolina, wondering what a legit exit strategy from the drug game looked like. So much had changed in Big’s life in such a short amount of time. And while he seemed to be batting 1.000 from an artistic perspective, peeling back the layers revealed a different story. Lew continues, “When we get outside, a girl outta nowhere-like just around the homecoming scene-seen Big take the boots out and she’s like, ‘Oooo, Biggie! You stole a pair of Timbs!’ We was laughing so hard, man!”Īt that point in time, it felt like Big’s career was impenetrable. He put one under one arm, the other under the other, right? Then he told me to walk behind him.” “Big had the big yellow bubblegoose on, and he took a pair of Timbs. We was wilding!” Groovey Lew said, laughing at the memory. “They was letting us in the stock room and everything. The book will be released May 10 buy it here or check out an exclusive excerpt below tracing the early days of Big’s fame. In Justin Tinsley’s new book, It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him, the author and Andscape writer unpacks Biggie’s monumental legacy with deep reporting and exclusive interviews with those who knew him best. No rapper in history had as much impact in as short a time frame as the Notorious B.I.G., who died 25 years ago this year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |