The final verse Biggie Smalls ever recorded

The late Biggie Smalls was one of the greatest rappers of the 1990s, and despite being part of the infamous East Coast versus West Coast feud, which ultimately led to his early demise, he is still considered one of the greatest ever to touch a microphone.

Wallace grew up in the heart of Brooklyn and, as an adolescent, freestyled with his friends on street corners. The musician (real name Christopher Wallace) quickly realised he was a skilled rhymer. As such, he began to take the art form seriously and ambitiously made a demo. Entitled Microphone Murderer, the tape spread like wildfire locally.

The various recordings eventually wound up in the hands of DJ Mister Cee. Cee was a highly influential New York tastemaker with associates across the city and beyond. With Biggie Smalls’ recordings receiving regular underground radio play, Wallace was swiftly picked up by Diddy (real name Sean Combs), who signed him to Bad Boy Entertainment. This was when Wallace’s ascent to superstardom began.

However, with the entire West Coast eager to see his downfall, Wallace was only able to put out two albums with Bad Boy before he got shot dead in 1997. His two projects, Ready To Die and Life After Death, are both considered legendary bodies of work. However, his last verse of all time didn’t appear on either.

Only a day before he was murdered on March 9th, 1997, Biggie recorded a verse for the Diddy track ‘Victory’. The Hitmen-produced song featured on Combs’ debut album, No Way Out, and featured some of Wallace’s most lethal bars.

In an interview on the making of No Way Out, audio engineer Stephen Dent recalled Puffy and Big working on ‘Victory’ together, unveiling, “Big put his part down, and then Puff lived with it for a couple days. Then, he came back, and he did his part, and, like I said, to me, that’s totally his best performance ever that I’ve ever heard. And then, when they added the Busta element when Busta came in, you know, it was just a big party.”

On the track, the ‘Hypnotize’ emcee raps, “Yo, the sun don’t shine forever / But as long as it’s here, then we might as well shine together / Better now than never, business before pleasure / P. Diddy and the fam, who you know do it better?”

‘Victory’ peaked at number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 but is considered a classic as it is widely known as the last verse Biggie Smalls recorded in his lifetime. You can hear the track in the video below.