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Biggie was the King Of New York as a rapper. There's a lot more dangerous guys than Biggie Smalls out there, you know what I'm saying? John Gotti was way closer to King Of New York than him.
Most people don't know that the biggest regret that I have - and it's a biggie - is not fighting harder for policy and very practical measures to support the development of the green jobs industry.
If you hear people talking about the Golden Era of rap, they're usually talking about the early Wu Tang Clan era and then Nas and Biggie and so on. But for me, it goes back to the '80s - 1986 to 1989.
Me and Biggie share a storytelling ability--he was an actor on wax, too. His stories were so vivid and torrid, he made you feel them. And we both have the hardness. When I come out on the mic, you know it's me.
I would never withhold information about the murder of my man Biggie, or anybody else. It's just silly and ridiculous. The accusations are just flying out. All I've been trying to do all my life is to make great music.
I listen to a lot of Tupac and Biggie Smalls. Old school songs. Rick Ross. I listen to a guy ASAP Rocky. I like different kinds of music. I always have. It motivates me before games... A Tupac playlist or a Meek Mill playlist. It varies.
I grew up listening to a lot of early '90s hip-hop. I had the debut Wu-Tang album, Biggie, Snoop, that kind of stuff. Hieroglyphics, the Gravediggaz. I remember D.O.C.'s 'The Portrait of a Masterpiece' was something that had a big influence on me.
I have a lot of friends who are in love the '90s. Girls, boys. '90s music? That's Tupac. That's Biggie. That's TLC. That's Aaliyah. I still listen to Aaliyah. I still listen to Tupac and Biggie. There's people who are really heavy on that culture.
With Biggie, I thought his flow and his swag was better than Tupac's, but I thought Tupac's passion and ability to relate to the average person was better than Biggie, and I thought Nas was kind of like both, with a lot substance going but a lot of swag.
People used to say my son looked like a Mexican Biggie. And when he was first born, memories of Biggie... you know, we didn't always have the greatest days. For at least half the length of our marriage we were separated, so everyday was definitely not a good day.
I decided to see how my voice sounds on different type of records. So I did Eminem and the Biggie, Florence and the Machine, and Muse covers. A couple of them just came from some jam sessions between me and my sister in her bedroom at my father's house in San Diego.
My dad is from Queens. I remember visiting as a kid. My grandparents grew up here. All the actors I respected were coming out of here. All the hip-hop I was listening to - Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Wu Tang - was coming out of New York. I'm just into it.
Biggie was to me the guy who was the best at painting the picture and making you visualize something, Pac was the best poet, and I feel like Jay Z is all of the above. Then Rick Ross is just, every line he spits is just perfect, and he's one of my favorite MCs of all time.
When I first met Big, we were both at a 'Bad Boy' family photo shoot. I was kind of familiar with the name Biggie Smalls, but I really wasn't that much into hip-hop at the time, so I really didn't know that was him. He said he didn't even know I was an artist on 'Bad Boy.'
If you think about 2Pac, Biggie, and Nas, all of those guys were teenagers or in their early 20s when they got started. Everybody acts like young people have to be silly and lack perspective. Those guys had incredible perspective, and everything that they said was before 25 years old.
Biggie was a lyrical genius: he was a musical painter with words. As he rapped, you would see the picture come to life as you heard his story. You hear a lot of rappers rap; you hear a lot of singers sing, but you don't see the movie in your head the way you do when you hear Biggie rap.
I'm part of the generation that grew up with great rappers like 2Pac and Biggie and people like Amy Winehouse. We've seen a lot of different artists come and go. Even people who are still here, they seem consumed and blinded by fame. It may not have taken them out physically, but they have been taken out.
I fell in love with hip-hop a little bit late; I grew up on Another Bad Creation and Kris Kross. But my mom got me a TV in my room, and I remember seeing Biggie's 'Give Me One More Chance,' and I was like, 'Oh, this is how a house party looks!' I really, really fell in love with it when Tupac created 'Dear Mama.'
I grew up in a little bubble of Brooklyn in France! In Stains, I was learning to speak English; I was listening to Biggie Smalls and KRS-One, and so I basically lived the life by proxy. At the same time, I had the same problems and issues they were singing about right next to me, so it was easy to identify with it.
A lot of people say I tried to emulate Tupac, but when I look back at my career, we're very different artists. I took pages out of Pac's book, of course, and lots of other rappers - Biggie, Nas - of course you take pages out of those books, but you eventually make it your own thing. And I think I did a good job of that.
Nobody uses skits at all anymore, so it seems like I use a lot. That's how I grew up on tapes. Biggie tapes, Biggie albums would have skits. The Lox would have skits. Mase would have skits. All the dudes I grew up on in Nineties rap would have skits on their projects, just to make you feel like you were right there with them.
Nas always been my favorite rapper, but 50 Cent, he changed my way of thinking about music 'cause he was so detailed in his music, I knew that wasn't lying. I never felt Tupac that way; I never felt Biggie that way. I love Nas music, but I never felt and believed like, 'This is for real.' 'Cause I grew up that gangsta lifestyle.
I wanna be in a movie, I wanna have a clothing line, I wanna put myself in a position where, when I'm dead and gone, or I can't rap anymore, that's still moving. Tupac and Biggie, they've been dead 10-plus years and people talk about them everyday. I'm gonna try to speak everything into existence. I know the music is my key to get there.
At a earlier age, I was kind of into a pretty large scope or range of music from Hieroglyphics and the Hobo Junction guys and all that to like a lot of stuff that was in New York like Diamond D, Nas, Brand Nubian, of course Biggie, OC, Organized Confusion, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Digable Planets, who I just saw recently, and they killed it.
Marriage. It's a hard term to define. Especially for me--I've ducked it like root canal. Still there's no denying the fact that marriage ranks right up there with birth and death as one of the three biggies in the human safari. It's the only one though that we'll celebrate with a conscious awareness. Very few of you remember your arrival and even fewer of you will attend your own funeral.
