Notorious B.I.G.

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: 10 - 1

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

DJ Whoo Kid Thinks Snoop Dogg Should Have Been the New Pope

Editor's note: In Tweets is Watching, Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline. Last week DJ Whoo Kid helped launch the video for A$AP Ferg's new track "40 Below," which also appears on his SXSW Social mixtape. When not granting assists to t ... More >>

Rolling Stone's Top 50 Rap Songs of All Time: Six Alternative Number One Picks

Rolling Stone recently published a run-down of the top 50 hip-hop songs of all time. After consulting with a panel of 33 journalists, industry figures and artists (including professional rap encyclopedia ?uestlove and the remaining members of the Beastie Boys), the numbers were crunched and Grandmas ... More >>

Rakim (6) And The Notorious B.I.G. (3) Battle In A SOTC March Madness Meeting Of Hip-Hop Greats

​Sound of the City's search for the quintessential New York City musician enters Round Two this week, with battles in the Round of 32 daily. Keep up with all the action here. Brooklyn's finest meets Strong Island's most prominent in a match up of two lyrical hip-hop powerhouses. Having steamrolle ... More >>

The Notorious B.I.G. (3) Takes On Oneida (14) As SOTC's March Madness Continues

​The Round of 64 for Sound of the City's own version of March Madness—in which you, the Sound of the City voting public, help determine the quintessential New York musician—is a little jam-packed today, with six matches on the docket. (The schedule and results so far are here; the full ... More >>

The Top Five Notorious B.I.G. Trademarks

Today marks 15 years since the Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed in Los Angeles, and even now there are constant reminders of his passing. I guess after that long, you get used to seeing reminders of him pretty often—the music, the bootleg t-shirts, the use of his image and most memorable l ... More >>

Blogroll Gazette: Exploding Food, Sushi Chef Flicks

This week in food blogs... Food Republic shows us how amazing exploding food is when photographed up close. Gilt Taste remembers Biggie Smalls' death with an essay by Francis Lam on what the rapper's lyrics taught him about food.

Controversy Over Biggie Mural in Fort Greene

​Who should get credit for a mural of Biggie Smalls designed by a 21-year-old Parsons student and painted by artists CERN and Lee Quinones? The mural was commissioned by the owner of Habana Outpost in Fort Greene, and features the famous Che Guevara photo that adorns a million t-shirts with th ... More >>

Heavy D, R.I.P.

​Mount Vernon-raised rapper Heavy D passed away yesterday. The artist, born Dwight Errington Myers, was found having problems breathing outside his home in Beverly Hills; he was taken to the emergency department of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and died later in the afternoon. For many, Heavy D ... More >>

DJ Premier & Kendra Morris

Tupac Is (Probably) Not Alive And Living In New Zealand

Not a recent photo. ​Oh, those hacker kids, getting up to no good on a holiday weekend by reviving the hip-hop generation's own "Elvis Alive And Eating Giant Sandwiches Somewhere Far Away" myth. A hacker collective calling itself (sigh) The Lulz Boat got all up in PBS' web site over the weeken ... More >>

10 Music-Related Revelations From The FBI's File On Biggie's Murder

​The 1997 murder of Christopher Wallace, b/k/a/ the rapper The Notorious B.I.G., remains unsolved. Last week, the case became both more transparent and more suspicious as the FBI opened up its files into an investigation about not just who shot Biggie Smalls, but also who helped orchestrate th ... More >>

This Week in the Voice: The Success of Bronx Success Academy 1

​This week in the Voice, Steven Thrasher examines the methods of the Success Charter Network and its polarizing CEO Eva Moskowitz. The Bronx Success Academy features "a half-time psychologist, a speech therapist, a music instructor, and even a chess teacher." Would you believe that it's workin ... More >>

Week In Review: We Also Accept Your Future Apology In Advance

Everybody just stop yelling, OK? Photo by Daniel Snyder.​In the week we talked about Odd Future, kidnapping and murder, and why we sometimes like the things that repel us, we also saw the group live--alongside every other music critic in the city. They struck a weird balance to the other big r ... More >>

Shyne Insists the Torah is Fine With Lamborghinis

Ricki Rosen for NYT​"The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes" taking "long, swift strides toward the Western Wall" in today's New York Times is not Knicks basketball star Amare Stoudemire, who discovered his Hebrew roots over the summer. It's Brooklyn ... More >>

The Ten Most Exploitative Posthumous Rap Projects

​Being a dead rap artist isn't much fun. Whether The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, or J Dilla, death has never seemed to do much to alleviate the constant pressure on artists to muster up new recordings to satisfy the bulging posthumous rap retail market. (In the hip-hop world, possessing a heart t ... More >>

In Honor Of Weezer's New Hurley, Here Are Suggestions For More Lost-Themed Albums

​So Weezer's next album is named Hurley, and that's the cover: an unadorned photo of Hurley's face. Even if you consider this a terrible idea, you must admit it doesn't crack the Weezer's top 25 worst ideas of the past five years; in fact, the idea of records inspired by Lost characters has po ... More >>

Live: Diddy Holds Forth on Biggie, Mary (The Biblical One), and His Own Ambition at 92Y Tribeca

​Shout-out to all the Scorpios in the house. Pics by Ken Goodman.​The question: "What's your favorite non-hip-hop pursuit?" Diddy's answer, after a meaningful, somewhat bewildered pause: "happiness."

Back to 'Africa' With Nas and Damian Marley

Why the blockbuster collusion of Distant Relatives feels so . . . distant

Week in Review: May Day

Salute. Photo by Sam Horine.​In the week we finally got to unleash the initial Siren Festival details on the world (July 17! 10th anniversary! Matt & Kim, Ted Leo, Surfer Blood, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and Harlem! Totally free!), we celebrated Cinco De Mayo like Anna Wintour, Pharrell, a ... More >>

Hey, Barack Obama Made a Notorious B.I.G. Joke at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Word is, the president's routine from this weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner--which killed, by the way--was put together in consultation with writers from the Daily Show. But anyone who knows anything about Barack Obama's musical tastes knows that he probably didn't need any help using B ... More >>

This Weekend! The Very Best, Theophilus London, Foreign Born, Woods, Real Estate, Magnetic Fields, The National, Sundelles, Darlings, Total Slacker, PC Worship, B.I.G. Karaoke, Stupid Party, and Truman Peyote

"You better buy a ticket and get your ass to Mars," advises the wise Johnny Loftus. He is, of course, speaking in reference to the latest installment of The Fader's "One Step Beyond" series, which takes place in the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space. There, you c ... More >>

BIGGIE UPS

A drunken, off-key tribute . . . is there any other kind?

The 50 Worst Songs of the '00s, F2K No. 22: The Notorious B.I.G. ft. Bob Marley, "Hold Ya Head"

F2K is a countdown of the 50 worst songs of the decade. Track our progress here. It's a shame the legacy of impossibly gifted MC Notorious B.I.G. is limited to two classic albums and one decent-enough comp--but, hey, better than the Pollard-style recording jags that Tupac has mysteriously maint ... More >>

R.A. the Rugged Man Abides

An uncouth Long Island rapper battles labels, homelessness, and (maybe) STDs

'Mister Saturday Night Presents Theo Parrish, Grand Pubah & Lord Finesse'

'Cause the Greatest Rapper of All Time Died on March 9th

March 9th, always a black day. It was on this date in 1997 that Biggie Smalls was gunned down in LA, a murder that is unsolved and will probably remain so. By way of homage, a mixtape tribute by DJ Drama & Cookin' Soul is floating around today, featuring various rappers going in over flipped Biggi ... More >>

BIG STARS

The notorious karaoke folks pay tribute to their fallen idol

Biggie's Small, in Notorious

Notorious B.I.G. made B.L.A.N.D.

This Week's Voice: Animal Collective, Antony Hegarty, Fiction Inspired By Sonic Youth, Notorious, and More

In this week's Village Voice Music Section, Mike Powell on the radical serenity/serene radicalism of Animal Collective. Michael D. Ayers sits down with Antony Hegarty. Carol Cooper reports back from GlobalFest 2008. In Books, Zach Baron reviews Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth. In Film, ... More >>

On Notorious B.I.G.'s "One More Chance (Legacy RMX)" feat. CJ Wallace

Reports from early screenings of the Notorious B.I.G biopic Notorious are promising: wildly uneven character acting, an uncannily Biggie-reminiscent Gravy in the title role, and a plot arc that sticks faithfully and unsensationally to Christopher Wallace's short but eventful life. Over the past co ... More >>

The Dirty Heartbeat of the Golden Age

Reminiscing on the SP-1200, the machine that defined New York hip-hop

Who Played Ya? Continued: the Online Search for Biggie Smalls

The Online Hunt For Biggie Smalls

Who Played Ya?

On the quite possibly ill-advised online hunt for the star of the Biggie Smalls biopic

Flyer of the Week: Best Thing Ever's Bathroom DVD Premiere

Freaknik Goes Conscious, But Not Overly So

Tical 2006: The Falling-Off

Wu royalty gets a bit too defensive with self-prophetic comeback/never-left campaign

Both Sides Now

In Paul Chan's apocalyptic landscape: Birds, suicide bombers, Pasolini, and Biggie Smalls

NYPD Admits to Rap Intelligence Unit

A look inside the NYPD's secret "Hiphop Task Force"

Keepin' It Unreal

$elling the Myth of Bla¢k Male Violen¢e, Long Past Its Expiration Date

World War of Words

As Battles Turn Complicated, Murder Remains Bigger Than Hip-Hop

An Interview With Biggie & Tupac Director Nick Broomfield

Flava Flav and the Mad Hatter

Hip-Hop Don’t Stop

Fool’s Paradise

Grave condition

Big Poppa, Little Willies

Recordings

Revenge of the Mad Rappers

When hip hoppers use violence to silence their critics