Jake Brennan (0:00)

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Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story is about the Notorious B.I.G. are insane. He was arrested almost too many times to count. He entered adulthood as a crack dealer and he left this world as one of its most famous hip hop stars. Murdered. Mysteriously, the Notorious B.I.G. altered the course of hip hop with the release of his debut album, Ready to Die. An album that served as a soundtrack of sorts for the highly publicized violent beef between himself and his one time friend, fellow rapper Tupac Shakur. But the Notorious B.I.G's career wasn't all about the beef. It was also obviously about the music. He made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called cola party hop mk1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to I'll Make Love to you by Boys II Men. And why would I play you that specific slice of Babyface penned cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 13, 1994. And that was the day the Notorious B.I.G released his debut album, Ready to Die, marking the beginning of his very short, impactful and notorious career. On this part, one of a special two part episode dealing crack, spitting beef, easy flow, hard beats and the Notorious B.I.G. i'm Jake Brennan and this is disgrace. America was, is and always will be about opportunity. The rub is that depending on one station in life, opportunity comes in different forms. For Freeway Rick Ross, an illiterate high school dropout living in South Central Los Angeles in the late 1970s, opportunity came in the form of rock cocaine. A born hustler, he couldn't believe the profit potential of this familiar drug when cut into a new form. Cocaine users couldn't believe how cheap it was. And Colombian wholesale distributors couldn't believe the ingenuity and ambition of their American street supplying partners. America. Opportunity for all. For Freeway Rick Ross, the cash gushed in a Nicaraguan connection, supplied Freeway Rick in bulk direct from the median cartel in Colombia. Rick took as much weight as they could provide, which in the 80s was a lot. He was buying upwards of 400 million kilos a week, turning a profit of $3 million a week. Serious weight turned into serious cash. Through an ambitious national distribution network that Freeway Rick set up. It took advantage of this country's vast interconnectivity via Dwight D. Eisenhower's interstate highway system, once procured in Los Angeles by way of Mexican drug smugglers. From its Columbia origin, Freeway Rick Ross took his cocaine and modified it into its highly addictive smokable rock form, also known as crack cocaine, packaged it and shipped it out en masse to streetside hustlers on corners all over urban American neighborhoods, who chopped it up, repackaged it and peddled it to mostly vulnerable, addicted members of their own communities. The crack shipped out of LA, south on the 10 east to Arizona, then north on 17 to Interstate 40. From there the illicit drug rode Highway 40 all the way east to Oklahoma City. And from okay City the crack cut northwest on Interstate 44 to Jefferson City. And from the Jeff it shot due north on 55 and then east on Interstate 90 straight toward north Central America's unconquered cocaine market there for the taking. Ohio so hungry was Ohio for Freeway Ricks crack, the return for him was like tapping into a well stocked bank vault. And Ohio was nothing compared to what lay two states away in New York with its city's five hungry boroughs. If Ohio was like a bank vault for a drug dealer like Freeway Rick, then New York was like the Federal Reserve. The cash flew back west and the crack poured to Manhattan from Interstate 80 to 280 east to the Holland Tunnel, through lower Manhattan via Canal street, over the Manhattan Bridge onto Concord street to the bqe, east off the expressway onto Washington street, through Clinton Hill, left on Gates, right on St. James, dead ahead to Fulton street and straight into the pocket of a young hustler on the corner with an imposing build, a lazy eye and an unmistakable flow. Spitting rhymes on the corner with his boys between games of sidewalk ceelo, clocking every driver of every car rolling by with that lazy eye, the scoping for two customers for the Rock and his sock tucked in under his Timberlands, always untied, always brand new, fresh like everything else about his appearance and cops looking to bust him in the grill with the butt of their 9 millimeter glocks, brace his wrists and haul him in and off to Rikers island for seizing what he believed to be the only opportunity available to him. Capitalizing on Freeway Rick Ross own opportunity by dealing his crack cocaine. Boy was Biggie Smalls wrong. The corner game was a lazy means to a corrupt end. Cash he brought in brought him the Timbs and the leather duster, the Polo and the other swag he needed to stay quote unquote fresh. A requirement for all Bedford Stuyvesant teens of the era, the late 1980s. One necessary to keep relevant with the ladies and on point with the fellas. Status sure, but also for a young man of modest upbringing, self respect as well. Biggie Smalls had nicked his name from the movie let's do it again after the film's gang leader character, his mother Violetta had named him Christopher Wallace. She was a hard working Jamaican immigrant who'd earned her way from nothing to the cusp of the middle class. And despite however he rationalized his drug dealing, he did have options and despite being a smart student, he dropped out of Brooklyn's Westinghouse High where fellow rappers DMX and Jay Z also attended, and hit the corner where, just as he had in school, he excelled. He took the game seriously. He wasn't going to end up in jail and he sure as shit wasn't going into the straight world with the dead eyed bums he watched entering and exiting the subways. Every day he'd bounce out of bed early for him at 9am and hit the check cashing spot by 9:15. Just in time for the crack fiends to get their hands around their cashed Social Security checks and eager to exchange it for Big's product. Late mornings and early afternoons were slow, but by 4:30 the hustle would hit home hard with the exiting subway commuters, most moving down Fulton and their zombie noise norm trances back to their bratty kids and annoying wives. But some stopping eager to buy a jack or two and obliterate any and all real world obligations. Suburban kids would come out at night too, in from Jersey or Upstate looking for their dirty city fixes. And Biggie would happily oblige. He didn't discriminate. It was all business. Locals, bridge and tunnel. Men, women, kids. He even had a pregnant customer he kept supplied with crack on the regular. Other dealers drew the line with selling to pregnant women. It was well known that the heavily addictive qualities of crack transmitted to the unborn, giving rise to the well publicized crack babies of the 80s and 90s, innocent friendly fire casualties of Ronald Reagan's drug war and freeway Rick Ross trade. But Big didn't care. He later told a journalist, I didn't get in this game to fit feel sympathy for nobody. I got into this game to eat because I can't do nothing else. But of course, the world would soon learn that Christopher Wallace could do something else. In fact, for Biggie Smalls, aka Big, aka the Notorious B.I.G. when it came to doing the job of making and recording rhymes, he could do it better than most. Spring is in Full bloom on DraftKings casino. New offers and promos are sprouting up daily. Right now new players can play five bucks on anything and get 350 casino spins instantly on a featured slot game. Download the app and sign up with Code Disgraceland. Take the featured slot for a spin and explore thousands of others in the DraftKings game library. Check back daily to claim the hottest offers and promos on DraftKings Casino. The crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org Please play responsibly. 21/physically present in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia only. Void in Connecticut and Ontario eligibility restrictions apply. New customers only. Non withdrawable casino spins Valid for featured game only and expire in 168 hours. See terms@casino.draftkings.com promos ends June 15, 2025 at 11:59pm Eastern Time do you know about how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? Or about Dwayne the Rock Johnson Snatch and Grab gang and the Rock's nearly 10 arrests? What about Danny Trejo running a drug protection racket while in lockup? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks? The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death? These stories and more are told in the new podcast Hollywoodland, where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by Movies Me Jake Brennan, creator of the award winning music and true crime podcast Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts. Critics are calling Thunderbolts one of the best Marvel movies of all time. It begins a powerful new era. That's what they talk about. Rolling Stone calls it thrilling. I should have seen this coming. Funny and irreverent. Thank you. We needed that. And it must be seen in IMAX. Marvel Studios Thunderbolts now playing. Rated PG13 some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. Another summer sound of the funky drummer Chuck D wasn't around the and by the time he and his group Public Enemy released Fight the Power, their devastating indictment of what they saw as an American capitalist system of white oppression, a track that screamed off the screen of Spike Lee's 1989 masterpiece do the Right Thing, hip hop had fully transitioned from a once dismissed novelty to full on cultural force. And the proof was all over Biggie Smalls teenage bedroom walls. And it wasn't just Public Enemy posters. Slick Rick, KRS1, the Jungle Brothers, LL Cool J, Eric B and Rakim and of course Brooklyn's finest Big Daddy Kane all enshrined Biggie's room. He was growing up amidst the masters of the golden age of hip hop. And none were more influential in those early days to him than Kane. Big Daddy Kane came up in Flatbush, studied at the knees of Marley Marle's Juice crew from Queens and put pen to paper for Biz Marquis. Big Daddy Kane grew into A fierce neighborhood battle rapper, one of the deadliest to ever grab the mic. His success was inevitable, with east coast tours, videos on Yo MTV raps and singles blasting from neighborhood boomboxes in Brooklyn. At least his legend was large, his shadow long. Biggie loved the music, sure, but the possibility of making something from nothing through music, as Kane was doing, stuck to him. He would spit rhymes on the corner with his boys while hustling. He was better than they were and that was obvious. But there was no time for real rap. Dealing crack was a full time job. Sometimes sleep was impossible. Biggie woke up on his mother's sofa and headed into his bedroom to get back to work, to finish cutting and bagging his crack stash to take to the streets. But it was a problem. His stash was gone. The dinner plate he used to cut and sort his drugs on was where he left it on his bed. But the pile of crack he left on top of it had disappeared. He looked everywhere, tore his room apart, and when he came up empty, he looked to the eyes on his wall for answers. Chuck D said nothing, just stared down in silent judgment. The Jungle brothers looked typically aloof, Eric B and Rakim nonplussed, and Kane satisfied that his one day competition was distracted and thus unable to come for his crown. Then Biggie's heart sank, realizing what must have happened. His mom's, he dragged himself shamefully into the kitchen and asked his mother if she'd been in his room. Only to clean up a bit, she replied. She then told him that he shouldn't leave half eaten plates of food lying around as they attract cockroaches, and asked him to grab the platform plate in this room, the one with the old hardened quote mashed potatoes she'd emptied into the trash. Biggie's boys on the corner laughed when we told them the story. The image of him on all fours combing through his trash barrel, picking crack out of it was hysterical to them. But the laughs wouldn't last. In 1990, at the age of 17, shortly after the cracked potatoes incident, Biggie Smalls was arrested for possession of an unregistered loaded firearm. The judge went easy on him and gave him only five years probation. But local cops were on to him from that point on, constantly clocking him, searching him, coming by his mom's house to warn her about what her son was up to dealing crack. She didn't believe them, and she couldn't barely believe her son at all when he came home shortly after his arrest and told her he was going to Be a father. His girlfriend was pregnant. It was his. He was going to do what his dad hadn't done and raise up his child. But with zero job prospects for a 17 year old high school dropout, had too much pride to beg or borrow. Hustling crack looked to be the only answer until a DJ named 50 grand entered his world. 50 heard Biggie rhyming on corners and at house parties and recognized his talent immediately. He told Biggie he had the gear to make a tape, so they did. His confidence, his command, his rhymes when the tape rolled were all way beyond what anyone expected for a first timer to be laying down in a makeshift neighborhood studio. When Biggie heard himself coming out of the speakers flowing over the break butte from the Emotions Blind Alley, a well known run of tape that Big Daddy Kane had repurposed for his Ain't no Half Steppin'he, was even surprised. He knew he had the skills. But to that point, it was all a dream. Hearing himself in real life on tape, it was nothing short of compelling. 50 grand was blown away. His boys were blown away. And more importantly, 50 grand's neighbor, the well connected DJ Mr. C was also blown away. C, fresh off tour with Big Daddy Kane, upon hearing Biggie's tape, was said to say that he was so impressed that he couldn't breathe. Cee agreed that he would try to get Biggie a record deal. Biggie warned him not to fuck it up. Cee heeded the big man's advice and got down to business. First, they recorded a proper demo. Second, Cee sent the demo off straight away to an influential editor of the Source magazine. The writer punched up a piece for his unsigned hype column. A column so impactful that it was known to literally make careers. Rappers Mobb Deep and DMX got signed off of write ups and unsigned hype, and so too would Biggie Smalls. But the writer did Biggie one better and tipped off a young scrappy A and R kid from Harlem by the name of Sean Puffy Combs. Sean Puffy Combs was ambitious and wise beyond his years. His ear for talent was as keen as his eye for identifying marketable qualities in artists. When Puffy heard Biggie Smalls, it was clear the kid had skills. But when he saw Biggie Smalls, Puffy knew he had something truly special. Biggie's look would have turned off most A and R men at the time. He was big, 375 pounds at his heaviest. But unlike the Fat Boys, Biggie Smalls wasn't comical. And unlike Heavy D Biggie Smalls didn't have his edges softened by R and B. Biggie Smalls was 6:2 and intimidating to look at. He looked exactly like what he a street corner drug dealing thug slinging crack rock as a means to survive, even if it cost someone else's life. His image was menacing. Sean Combs sniffed out the potential immediately. Biggie Smalls could have a unique kind of appeal. Biggie Smalls could be notorious. But even with Sean Combs interests, a deal was hard to paper. Puffy was working on his own future Machiavelli ing his way out from under his mentor Andre Harrell at Uptown Records and into his own joint venture label with Arista Records. He had the perfect name for Bad boy Entertainment and the perfect artist to lead the way. Biggie Smalls, newly christened the Notorious B.I.G. still, despite Combs earnest interest in launching his career, Biggie Smalls waited for his record deal. And with a new baby on the way, he waited impatiently for the much needed money his deal would come with. Money needed to take some of the pressure off. He waited and waited some more and then some more, until finally deciding that the deal was a bust. And in the absence of a music career, he'd need to go back to the only other thing he was good at. Dealing crack. So that's what he did when it came to crack for Biggie. Small malls. The weight was in New York City, but the cash was now in North Carolina. In Brooklyn, crack was everywhere. Buyers could afford to shop around. If they didn't like what Biggie was peddling, they could move on down the block to the next dealer for a better price. Making money, real money, money that could feed a family, was becoming harder for Biggie in New York. But in North Carolina, he had a connect. A connect to a seller's market. There was less crackdown selling, but there was hardly any less demand. In fact, Biggie could post up in Raleigh and buyers would drive into town en masse looking to purchase in bulk to take care of their street corner dealers, who in turn took care of their local feeds. The money poured in. Biggie and his connect were pocketing about 30 grand every two weeks. Not bad for a high school dropout. North Carolina was anything but a lonely existence around town as a hustling export, he was a bit of a local celebrity in the clubs. He was enjoying himself, having fun stacking cash and had no intention of rushing back to New York anytime soon. But his phone wouldn't stop ringing and his pager wouldn't stop buzzing. His mom his girl Puffy, no doubt with more bullshit about an impending deal that never seemed to come. Biggie tried ignoring the distractions of home and to instead focus on the hustle, focus on the fun. But soon, sooner or later, the messages got through, and they were all the same. Christopher, where the fuck are you? Puffy won't stop calling, looking for you. Hit him back and call me back. I'm about to have your goddamn baby and I needs money. And. And. And Eventually, Biggie Smalls did indeed call Sean Puffy Combs back from his and his drug dealing partner's rented apartment house in Raleigh, North Carolina. Puff knew what Biggie was doing down there and told him he was a damn fool and he had a contract and a check waiting for him on his desk. And that if he went and got himself busted for dealing weight, which with every day he pressed, his luck became more and more of a likelihood. Then there would be no rap career. From behind bars, Biggie protested. He was making good money. What did he need to fuck with the music industry for? Puffy assured him this wouldn't be no one and done flash in the pan nonsense. He had a plan. A plan to make him a star. That this wasn't just about Biggie Smalls. It was about the launch of Bad Boy Entertainment as well. It was about Sean Puffy Combs climbing out from the shadow of his mentor and making it on his own. So he best get the fuck out of dodge with the quickness and get himself back to Manhattan to sign his deal and cash his check. So that's what Biggie Smalls did. He split North Carolina for New York City that very same morning after getting off the phone with Puffy and headed north to try and make his way as a rapper. Just like Kane. A life in hip hop without the cocaine. A different kind of hustle. That afternoon, after he left the house he rented in Raleigh with his North Carolina connect, the house was raided by the cops. Everyone in it was promptly arrested on stiff drug distribution charges and eventually sentenced to long prison terms. But not Biggie Smalls. He was off out, about to be on some other trip entirely. We'll be right back after this word. Word, word. 24 chefs. 24 culinary showdowns for 24 hours straight. Which chef will out cook, outpace, outlast the competition? No chef escapes the clock. All new 24 and 24. Last chef standing Sunday night at eight. See it first on food network. Stream next day on Max. Hey there, travelers. Kaley Cuoco here. Sorry to interrupt your music. Great artist BT dubs. But wouldn't you rather be there to hear it live? With Priceline, you can get out of your dreams and into your dream concert. They've got millions of travel deals to get you to that festival, gig, rave, sound bath or song experience you've been dreaming of. Download the Priceline app today and you can save up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights. So don't just dream about that trip. Book it with Priceline. Go to your happy price. Priceline. This episode is brought to you by Matts Presenting HBO Original Comedy Special Bret Goldstein the second Best night of your life Emmy winning actor, writer and comedian Brett Goldstein brings his irresistible charm and quick wit stateside for his first ever HBO Stand up special. Goldstein sheds his testy Roy kid facade to share his hilarious insights on love, sex, masculinity and more. Brett Goldstein, the second Best night of your life now streaming exclusively on MA how about dope? Grass? Hash? Coke? Mescaline? Downers? Nebunol? Tunol? Chlorohydrates? How about uppers? Amphetamines? Biggie shook his head. He wasn't interested. Crystal meth. I can get you crystal meth. Nitrous oxide. How about that? How about a Cadillac? I get you a brand new Cadillac with a pink slip for 20 grand. Biggie just stared at the bed and the cheap motel where they were haggling. Easy. Andy wouldn't shut up. The easy part of his name must have been a joke, because he was anything but easy to deal with. Maybe he got the name because he could get you whatever you wanted easily. Biggie didn't know. All he knew was that he wanted to talk about the guns laid out neatly in the suitcase on top of the bed. The.44 Magnum in particular. Andy called it a real monster, and it was. It could stop a car at 100 yards, put a round right through the engine block. It was beautiful, too, but it wasn't practical. Unlike the.38 snub nose. Another beauty. Nickel plated, compact, but powerful and reliable. Nice action. Heck of a wallop. Cops carried them for a reason, and Biggie wanted them both as well as the Colt.25 automatic. A real honey. A nice little gun in the.388. Shots in the clip. Sophisticated by comparison. Into the Rest Easy Andy told him that in World War II was only issued to officers. Classy. Biggie liked that. He knew Tupac Shakur would too. After all, the guns were for Tupac, Big's new brother from a wildly different mother. For an extra five large, Easy Andy would see to it that the guns made it safely to Tupac out on the West Coast, a heavy freight charge. But for Big, it was worth it. After securing the deal for the guns, Big hopped in the back of his chauffeured SUV. Dr. Dre's Let Me Ride blasted through the speakers. Man, this never got old. Biggie thought the album was a big influence for the Notorious B.I.G's first album, Ready to Die. Released as promised on Sean Puffy Combs as Bad Boy Entertainment on September 13, 1994. The album was a hit out of the gate, selling half a million copies in its first week. And though Dre didn't produce the album, his Chronic had a lot to do with its success. Big heard in the Chronic a kindred style, a laid back sensibility that he could relate to, because it wasn't just laid back, it was real. The hardcore realism of west coast rap was something that had recently fallen out of fashion on the east coast, where consciousness rap, with its positive messages and Beta Boy academic vibes, reigned supreme. East coast hip hop in the early 90s was more Huxtable than hardcore, and that didn't speak to Big. Sure, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul were onto something, but it didn't do for Biggie what the Chronic did. So when it came time to write and record his debut, Big enlisted some of the East Coast's deadliest production weapons he, Easy mo B&BJ Premier to craft beats into a unique style befitting the Big man. Like Dre, Big would mix the hard with the smooth hard as in the hardcore New York City street reality where Big made his living dealing drugs. Smooth as in the easy R and B sensibilities that sophisticated east coast listeners caught into. Whereas Dre turned to George Clinton and Zapp, Big turned to Isaac Hayes and Teddy Pendergrass. And just as Snoop went laid back with that unique flow of his, Big was able to do the same with his flow. But like Snoop, Big's voice and Big's flow were entirely his own. And when it all came out filtered through his authentic street point of view and personality, it was very clear that the Notorious B.I.G. was onto something entirely unique for the time. And just as Dre had done with the Chronic, Big had now done with Ready to Die created another inflection point for the artist's relatively young musical genre with one fully realized artistic statement with one album. His debut album, the Notorious B.I.G ushered in a new phase of hip hop. When the Notorious B.I.G released his debut album, Ready to Die, on Sean Puffy Combs Bad Boy Entertainment. The results of Biggie's creative vision, a melding of sorts between east and west coast sensibilities, are undeniable. Kids loved it. Critics loved it. Fellow rappers loved it, Tupac Shakur included. Ever since first Hearing the Notorious B.I.G. in 1993, Tupac was enamored of him, both as a person and as a fellow rapper. And of course, Big was in a kind of awe of Tupac, who at the time was a little further along in the rap game. The two men, despite their many obvious differences, became fast friends, both. Both fulfilling something different in the other. Tupac grew up poor, the son of a Black Panther, a radical activist, an addict. He'd learned his trade from real life revolutionaries. It was as hardcore and real a background as a rapper could have, and Christopher Biggie Smalls Wallace envied Tupac Amaru Shakur for it. Biggie grew up with a single mom, sure, in the middle of a dangerous city. But in comparison to the way Tupac Tupac grew up, Big was bourgeois, practically middle class. That said, Tupac as a child growing up was bookish and a serious student of the arts. He attended the prestigious Baltimore School for Performing Arts. And though his neighbors on the hard streets of Baltimore no doubt lived lives of violence and crime, and though his mother's friends were some of the country's most revolutionary activists, Tupac was relatively soft by comparison. Comparison. And in Biggie he saw a real street thug, someone who had the balls to take what was his by any means necessary through his chosen trade of drug dealing. They loved hanging out with each other when one was on the other's coast. They took care of each other. Big hosted Pac, Pac did the same for Big. And when Tupac's big mouth started getting him in trouble and his fame started to freak him out and he began complaining about having to look around too too many corners for fear of getting jacked. Big did what friends do and looked out for his boy. He shipped him the fresh arsenal he'd procured in a dingy east coast motel, hand picked just for his paranoid friend out west. But either the guns came too late or Tupac forgot or didn't bother to make sure they made their way back with him east for his next trip to New York. Or perhaps he just didn't bother to carry one with him that night. Quite Quad Studios to feature on the Bad Boy Records artist Little Sean session that was going on a floor below where Big and Puffy were also recording, working on Biggie's warning video. Tupac had a Lot on his mind. The trial for sexual assault that he was up against was wearing on him and draining his bank account which is the real reason he was doing the session that evening. He needed the cash, but the session would never happen. The shots came as soon as he entered the hallway at Quad Studios. Five of them from the pair of 9 millimeters carried by the roughnecks shaking him down. They wanted his money and his jewels. One in the hand, two in the head, one in the thigh, exited through the scrotum. The shooter split. Split. After running Tupac's jewels and his cash, he crawled into the hallway elevator, got a bloody finger on the button and was lifted to the second floor studio. When all was said and done, Tupac came out of the melee having survived with five gunshot wounds. With Tupac in the hospital nursing his wounds and then in and out of court in extreme pain, Big ran all over town trying to buy as much weed as he could for his friend to help him recuperate. He had Pac's best interests and well being front of mind after the shooting. But Tupac had a different point of view from where he sat after the trial. In prison, sentenced to one and a half to four years for first degree sexual abuse, he started to see his friend in a much different light than his friend saw him. To Tupac, Biggie and Puff's reaction in the immediate aftermath of the Quad shooting was highly suspicious. Pac recounted to a journalist in a jailhouse interview that when Biggie and Puff saw Tupac bleeding out on the floor with fresh gunshot wounds, they didn't move to help him. In fact, they looked surprised to see him. Tupac was insinuating that Big and Puff, his friends were surprised by because they knew he was going to be shot. So they were thus surprised to see him alive. Nine months into his sentence, Tupac was sprung from prison by Dr. Dre's notorious blood Street Gang affiliated Death Row Records label boss Suge Knight and thus now firmly under the wing, protection and career in financial control of Shook. With that muscle at his back, Tupac became more outspoken than ever. Ever. Except now, instead of preaching the raw truth of life in the ghetto for young black men, Tupac was spreading his gospel of the Quad Studio shooting. Specifically his belief that Big and Puff had set him up. When this happened, the media smelled blood with the newfound rivalry between Tupac Shakur and his former friend the Notorious B I D G between Suge's new record label Death Row Records and label boss Suge Knight and Biggie's label Bad Boy Entertainment. And its boss, Sean Puffy Combs. And between the coast west versus east, the beef was undeniably compelling. It sold newspapers, it sold magazines, and most important, it sold records. The music press often chronicled the rivalry between Shakur's West Coast Death Row Records Good Night. And Biggie Smalls Bad Boy Entertainment with Sean Puffy Holmes. Shakur has been at the center of a battle between east and west coast rappers. It has been a battle mostly of words and music. But as recently as Wednesday night, Shakur was in New York at the MTV Music Awards. He and his friends got into a confrontation at Radio City Music hall, which the police had to break up. And talk again tonight about reports that Shakur's death is a result of an ongoing east versus west rap dispute. Tupac Shakur was riding in this black BMW. Was riding in this black BMW when the gunfire erupted. After Mike Tyson knocked out Bruce Seldon Under a minute 20, Tupac sat in the passenger seat of Suge's BMW at the corner of East Flamingo Road and Cova Lane. And Suge was at the wheel. From out of nowhere, a late model Cadillac rolled up along the passenger side of the BMW. Then countless bullets fired. One in Tupac's arm, one in Tupac's thigh, two in his chest. The one in his right lung. The kill shot. The kill shot. The Notorious B.I.G. cried when he heard the news that his friend Tupac Shakur had been shot and killed. First, he couldn't believe the way Tupac was behaving toward him. Now he couldn't believe that Tupac was gone. Murdered. With the killer still on the loose and with a new record to finish writing and recording, a follow up to Ready to Die, there was no time for tears. Never mind actually processing his grief in any real way, Tupac's death had Christopher Wallace in shock. It was never supposed to come to this. How did everything, it seemed, become so complicated? Hip hop stardom was supposed to alleviate the pressures of life, not add to them. But that was exactly what had happened. Biggie no longer knew what his purpose was. To be famous for what and how on some beef that kills your friendship and gets someone you admire killed to be a father, a husband. He and his baby mama had split before his child was even born. But he still wanted to provide his baby with everything. Except he had other commitments now. To his wife, Faith Evans, to his fans. He was pulled in so many directions at once, and committing himself in earnest to family life at the rambunctious age of 24 just wasn't happening. He was too young to fully commit or to settle down in any real way. It to be an artist, maybe, but life was so complicated that it was near impossible to find the brain space to fully invest in the new album he was making. Biggie's complications didn't all of a sudden die with Tupac. Big had recently been arrested again, this time for marijuana possession. His car was impounded, and at the moment he was dead. Desperately needed at the studio, he and his boy little Cease rented a shipbox Chevy Lumina to get them to where they needed to be in time for the session. The car rental place was dubious and the Lumina was a legit honk, but it was all that was available to rent, and Big was determined to get to the studio, get into the work, get his mind off of things. They drove through the rain on the highway in silence, despite his recent arrest, in the complicated mess his life had become with fame, despite the beef that still raged between the coast, despite Tupac's passing. In this moment, at least, with the sound of the wet highway passing them by, the silence in the car, the radio off, no yammering from Cease, rain pelting the car at a safe 55 miles per hour, the hypnotic swipes of the windshield wipers, it all added up to a kind of momentary peace for Biggie Smalls. And then Cease went to make his exit off the highway. He put his foot to the brake pedal, only to realize that there were no brakes in this piece of Chevy. They'd completely gone useless. The car refused to slow on the off ramp, and they glided over the wet road at a furious clip. Cease turned to Big for an answer, and then I'm Jake Brennan in this episode of Disgraceland is to be continue. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening, as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. 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