The Notorious B.I.G. Artistfacts

May 21, 1972 - March 9, 1997
He was better known as Biggie Smalls, the name he used until he signed his record deal and learned that another rapper was using the Biggie moniker.
He really was big - about 6' 3" and 300 pounds - and had the booming voice to match. His style was slow and controlled, annunciating the lyrics so they were easy to understand. He prided himself on his writing, leaving improvisational freestyling to other rappers.
The Notorious B.I.G. was a flagship artist on Bad Boy Records, the label set up by Sean "Puffy Daddy" Combs in 1993. Puffy was working at Uptown Records when he found out about Biggie thanks to the March 1992 issue of Source magazine, which got a hold of his demo tape and mentioned him in their Unsigned Hype column.
The Notorious B.I.G. released just one album while he was alive - Ready To Die in 1994 - but made lots of guest appearances in the aftermath, often with Bad Boy artists. His second album, Life After Death, was released two weeks after he was killed, and two more posthumous albums followed.
He was 24 when he died in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, rumored to be retaliation for the murder of his rival, Tupac Shakur, who was killed six months earlier. Biggie's killer was never identified, but there's no shortage of theories, including some laid out in the 2002 documentary Biggie & Tupac.
He was married to the singer Faith Evans, another Bad Boy artist. They got married in 1994 but were separated by the time he died. They had a son, Christopher Jordan, in 1996.

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