Biggie's Last Stand

March 9, 1997. Christopher Wallace, known as Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed near the mid-Wilshire district in Los Angeles. Within the next eight years, hundreds of witnesses were interviewed and a number of allegations and denials were made. David Segal, from the Washington Post, writes, "There were dozens of potential witnesses that night, and the Los Angeles Police Department would later say it completed more than 200 interviews in the case. But no criminal charges were ever filed." Many people questioned a link between Biggie's death and the death of Tupac Shakur, yet neither death brought a single case to court. In June, Voletta Wallace, mother of Christopher Wallace, sued the Los Angeles Police Department, claiming that a cop named David Mack had close professional ties to Death Row Records, and that Biggie was killed by Mack at the behest of Suge Knight. Russell Poole, who was a former detective in the case, "resigned from the department in 1999, claiming that higher-ups had blocked his aggressive pursuit of allegations of widespread corruption in the department."

If this allegation is true, then I believe a whole new chapter to the book will open up. Currently, Mack is serving time for bank robbery. So, I think that he could very easily be connected in the murder of Biggie. The article I read on this matter is very interesting. Check it out!

The article continues on the idea of how Tupac and Biggie's deaths lead to a change in the way that modern rapper's feud. Segal writes, "People still talk gun talk, but there's a difference between talking gun talk and actually doing it," says Cheo Hodari Coker, author of "Unbelievable: The Life, Death and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G." "Now rappers are more likely to keep their beefs on records rather than let it escalate." Consider Ja Rule and Eminem, Murder, Inc. vs. Shady Records. There is an on-going feud that listeners can recollect hearing through both of their albums. The tension has died down within the lyrics, but questions still rise about the intensity otherwise. It's funny to think about hip hop music from the beginning; there has always been competition, but not his much, not to this degree. The problem arises where because of these tensions, the hip hop culture may be getting an image that is far from the truth.