Credit: Alamy

The Notorious BIG was one of the realest rappers to live. His gritty rhymes portray the truths of living in New York City as a Black man in the 1990s, and the seemingly inevitable influence of crime.

In an interview in 1994, Biggie spoke about life before fame and how he got sucked into the drug trade as a kid in Brooklyn. He even remembered that his assigned turf was Fulton Street in the borough, specifically the stretch between St. James and Washington Avenue.

“Everything was happening on that strip of Fulton Street”, Biggie said. But before it became his place of business, it was simply part of his daily routine. “If I wanted Chinese food, if I wanted to play video games, if I wanted pizza, if I had to go to the corner store for a juice, I had to go on Fulton Street. So I was witnessing it every day”, he explained.

The legendary rapper went on to say that he was drawn into hustling not just because of his physical proximity to it, but because he saw that dealers there were making good money. For a kid from a working class family in Brooklyn, Biggie saw that the Fulton dealers were successful, and it became a source of inspiration for him.

“I knew n****s was gettin’ money, and I knew they were selling drugs”, he said. “I knew they was fly as hell – they had hundred-and-fifty-dollar Ballys on and bubble gooses and sheepskins, and I was like ‘Oh shit. These n****s just doin’ it’”.

Biggie knew they were selling drugs, but he didn’t know exactly what until the crack cocaine epidemic in NYC hit the news. “I heard heard about crack cocaine on the news and I was like ‘Oh that’s what the n****s must be doing’”, he said.

So, how did he start selling drugs?

Before he began dealing himself, Biggie started with petty crime. He admitted that he’d been “snatching pocketbooks and shit like that. Going to the bank machines and catching somebody getting money out of the machines”. Yet despite his activities, he couldn’t do anything with the money he was getting.

“I couldn’t buy no sneakers or nothing because I couldn’t bring them in the house”, Biggie told the interviewer. “It got to the point where I used to hide all my clothes on the roof”. Biggie’s Mum, it would seem, was scarier to face than the law.

When BIG. transitioned to selling drugs, it was because a neighbour (who was already dealing) approached him with a proposition. He asked the rapper, “Yo, why don’t you take some of that money, and we’ll go to the corner and get our thing going”. BIG’s response? “Fuck it. Might as well”.

The operation was strategic. Biggie would wake up at 9am every Saturday because that’s when Social Security checks were handed out. “So we’d be up early – as soon as [people] got their money, we’re going to be the first people they see”, he explained.

The business eventually expanded beyond Brooklyn, and BIG spent two years working in North Carolina selling there. When he was just 17, he got caught transporting drugs from New York and spent nine months in jail. He was released on bail for $150,000 but never returned to court – even once he was famous.

Reflecting on his dealing days, Biggie said “Sometimes I be jealous of them n****s, because even though what I was doing was dead wrong, we still had mad fun”. It even beat his early music success: “I’m doing this shit by myself now. I’m lonely. I’m bored!”