"This is what I want y'all to do. I want y'all to grab all y'all Dutch Masters and all y'all White Owls, and y'all Phillies, get you a fat sack, a pint of Hennessy and lay back..." - The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls is the Wickedest [buy the album]
"Ms. Wallace?" Voletta Wallace dropped the phone. She didn't need to hear anything else.
Here I am reading about this hardcore cat and Cheo Hodari Coker has me crying like I'm some punk. This shit would not have played on Fulton Ave. with the hustlers, the stick-up kids, and Christopher Wallace. Crying does not help real street niggas get that paper.
But the tears came, anyway. The same way they came for Lil' Cease and D-Dot and Don Pooh and all those that had gotten to experience all that was this 6'4" inch dark as night but nice on the mic kid named Biggie Smalls. That's how I felt by the time Coker is getting to explaining his last night on earth, like I had known this man. B.I.G. is absolutely my favorite MC. I simply don't think anybody tells a story better than he does on wax. I don't think there was before him and definitely not since been anyone who was as adept at manipulating rhymes, making it the most impeccable art - Layered, thoughtful and clever. Both timely and timeless, something very very few hip hop heads are ever able to do. But that person on wax has always been more personae than truth, a lot of character and charisma but not Chris. Coker's book, Unbelievable: The Life, Death and Afterlife of The Notorious B.I.G. through classic and new interviews with and about the boy who would become the King of New York, helped me find him.
Lynne had mentioned on my post about Freestyle that some of my writing style there had reminded her of how Coker wrote in this book. I'm flattered by the comparison because while I'm able to turn what I saw on-screen into an okay story, Coker's writing is much more visceral. He's there, in the thick of it. I can practically smell the stench of those trees Biggie and his crew seemed to be always smoking. My shoulders constrict with tension every time that real thug street shit creeps back into B.I.G.'s life. I'm laughing heartily and regularly at the dark absurdity of situations in his life (much of which would end up in the outrageously hardcore humor of his best lines and freestyles). My heart breaks every time Voletta Wallace seeks to protect her son from the inevitable. It's a tale not unworthy of a Scorsese or Coppola film.
It's also a pretty complete document on the rise of Puff Daddy, the hip hop landscape in the early nineties, and the descent and demise of 2Pac. There is a lot of repetition of phrases, information and moments as Coker relies heavily on the same major interviews and quotes to tell different stories throughout the book. It's at times distracting but doesn't detract from the overall strength of the book.
Not only was Coker a journalist during Biggie's rise to the top of the rap game, he was also his friend. This book is like a love letter to him especially because it ripples with honesty. Coker doesn't shy away from Christopher's infidelity, his crimes, or the speculation surrounding him and 2Pac. He puts it all out there, only once, at the very end of the book, taking the time to address the reader directly and explain what he believes about that night in Las Vegas, that night in LA and the 2002 LA Times piece by Chuck Phillips that so pissed me off 2 years ago.
I'm late to the table on this one but if you haven't checked for Unbelievable in the year it's been out, check for it now. Otherwise, you just can't really know why Biggie Smalls is the illest.
And why I'll always love Big Poppa.