A woman passes by a mural of the rapper Biggie Smalls on a wall in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images
On Sept. 13, 1994, the same day President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, rapper Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls, or the Notorious B.I.G., released his debut album, Ready to Die.
Author Justin Tinsley calls the convergence of the two events a “form of serendipity,” with Biggie’s album, which details his life as a young Black man growing up in Brooklyn, acting as a “rebuttal” to the punitive Crime Bill.
In his book, It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World That Made Him, Tinsley details the rapper’s life and legacy. Ready to Die, Tinsley says, is “basically saying, ‘OK, we understand how Washington and Congress and so many other levels of government view these inner-city kids. But I’m going to give you the perspective of being an inner-city kid. … These are the things we’re trying to survive.’”
Born in Brooklyn in 1972 to parents who had immigrated from Jamaica, Biggie began selling drugs on the corner to make money. Occasionally, he’d travel from New York to the Carolinas to sell, and during these long car rides, he got to practice rapping. Tinsley says that everyone who heard him recognized his immense talent.
“When you listen to Biggie rap, you’re like, ‘OK, this guy is special,’” Tinsley says. “He was put on this Earth for a lot of reasons. But one of the most important was to make music.”
Biggie was 22 when Ready to Die came out; it would be the only album released during his lifetime. He was killed in a drive-by shooting in…
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