The rapper Biggie Smalls compared to selling drugs
The late legend Biggie Smalls is considered a legend and one of hip-hop’s true lyricists. As a staple of the 1990s, he and Nas ran New York during the early part of the decade. The Brooklyn native (real name Christopher Wallace) got discovered by Diddy after featuring Source magazine’s unsigned hype column, and from there, he exploded.
As the face of Bad Boy Entertainment, his lavish videos and suave raps turned him into somewhat of a sex symbol in the mid-90s, and he enjoyed vast amounts of success while under the now-disgraced Diddy.
As all MCs do, Wallace considered himself the best, which is the default position of all artists. However, he had some rappers that he preferred over others and, unlike some timid rhymers, wasn’t afraid to vocalise who he thought was subpar.
Nowadays, new artists rarely speak out and diss their peers for no reason and would hesitate to call another artist “lame” for fear of being labelled a “hater” or getting roped into an unending, pointless social media spat.
However, in 1995, with the Canadian magazine Peace, the ‘Hypnotise’ emcee was asked to rate some of his hip-hop counterparts, and he had no problems responding and did so with brutal honesty.
Wallace said many things during the interview that were poorly received by the artists he talked about, especially E-40. During the conversation, Biggie labelled the Bay Area as a rapper a zero out of ten and exclaimed, “I don’t fuck with dude at all. At all.” He did the same for Spice1, again bluntly admitting, “I don’t like that guy at all.”
However, there was an East Coast artist the Ready To Die emcee had mixed feelings about, admitting that he once really liked him but went off him. The artist he was referring to was Redman. When speaking about his mixed views on the lyricist (real name Reginald Noble), Wallace explained, “[He’s a] seven. I can’t diss him ’cause I know he got skills.”
He continued, “He get busy on the lyrics, but I can’t feel his new shit, his new cosmic crazy shit. I’m used to the clean-cut blowout fly nigga. When I met the nigga he was a fly nigga, you know what I’m sayin’, but now he on some different shit!”
Speaking about how he had changed, Biggie used a drug dealing analogy, stating, “I really don’t like when a rapper come out, and they blow up the way they are, and they come out again on some changed-up shit. To me, that’s like getting some good coke from poppy and then getting some money and then be like,’ fuck that! I’m getting some more 45ths, some brown shit and then bag that up.’ Why would you change your plan? That’s what he did to me.”
Although Redman and Biggie never collaborated while the former was alive, Noble featured on ‘Rap Phenomenon’, a track from the posthumous Biggie album Born Again. You can listen to the song in the video below.