He was tragically gunned down in 1997, but was a prominent rapper beforehand. However, what was Biggie Smalls’ first song?
Biggie Smalls’ first solo song was titled Party and Bullshit, and was released in 1993 on the soundtrack for a movie titled Who’s The Man?
Read on to learn more about Biggie Smalls’ ‘notorious’ musical career.
B.I.G.
Christopher George Latore Wallace went by many names. The most prominent were Biggie Smalls, or The Notorious B.I.G. He was an intimidating figure, tall, very large and confident. Allegedly, Smalls began dealing drugs from a very young age, in New York City.
As a child, he was overweight. This was an attribute that continued in earnest into his adult years, and by the time of his death, Smalls weighed around 350 lbs. This is where the naming convention came from, and it described him perfectly.
The struggles of an inner-city youth growing up in New York in the seventies and eighties were prevalent for Smalls. He gravitated towards crime, his father abandoned the family very early on, and he fell in with street gangs and a petty criminal lifestyle.
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As a teenager, Smalls gravitated towards rapping, and music. He would attend school in the same institution as other future prominent rappers: Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z and DMX. He never graduated from school, leaving at seventeen years of age to involve himself deeper in crime.
He was ultimately arrested in the late eighties, facing weapons charges. Smalls was found guilty, and sentenced to five years’ probation, which he violated a year later. Bizarrely, his next arrest would come in North Carolina, in 1991, for dealing hard drugs.
Biggie spent almost a year in jail, before being released on bail. This is when he decided to dive into music in earnest, and spent time compiling a demo tape. This is also where he adopted the moniker, Biggie Smalls.
He found his way into collaborative positions with other artists. Over the next two years, he appeared on numerous tracks and albums, contributing to their works. However, it would be in April 1993 that he released his first solo track, Party and Bullshit, as part of a movie soundtrack.
You can listen to this song on YouTube, below (explicit lyrics).
Notoriously Short-Lived
Biggie Smalls worked hard once he’d carved his way into the industry. He was determined to restore publicity and credibility to ‘east-coast’ rap music. The reasoning behind this was the upsurge in ‘west-coast’ rap music at the time.
He was signed to Bad Boy Records, one of the first artists to be so upon its launch in 1993. Smalls became one of the most prominent and central figures in East Coast hip-hop, at the core of Bad Boy.
There was plenty in store for Smalls, and he’d see at least some of it before his tragic passing. He’d receive numerous awards for his work, and would come to be well-known across the industry for his lyrical and vocal talent.
In 1995, there was a massive spectacle and rivalry that spawned between the East and West coast scenes. In particular, there was a lot of bad blood between Biggie and then-prominent rapper, Tupac Shakur.
In mid-1996, Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting, and there were many rumors suggesting Smalls was involved. It was mere months later that Smalls also met his end, being gunned down in the same way by an unknown party.
The violent and explosive lifestyle led by these men had ended in the worst way possible. The amount of talent wasted was staggering, and Biggie Smalls’ career had lasted just five years.
However, his legacy would go on for decades to come, and his music remained popular, particularly among other musicians.