But as a thought experiment, I’ll present Biggie as a hypothetical athlete: Imagine a rookie who enters the NBA, wins Rookie of the Year, MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, leads the league in points, rebounds and assists, and wins the championship. There’s no real comparison in sports, with the possible exception of Len Bias, who never got to the league. Let’s widen the aperture on the question of greatness itself.
Biggie’s closest musical counterpart in terms of resume is probably Amy Winehouse, a brilliant artist and writer, but she only gave us 25 proper songs, basically the length of Life After Death to assess, before passing on. Nirvana had three proper albums and a historic MTV Unplugged session. But The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones had three albums in a collective - as did Hendrix. Biggie has slightly older peers in the infamous 27 Club. So let’s attempt crossing genres to find historical counterpoints. No other rapper offers such an unorthodox challenge to the question of quality over quantity. With the possible exceptions of Big L and Big Pun, who didn’t quite put together the formal body of work in the same tragically brief period of time, there’s no career to even compare him to. If the answer is yes, the conversation is equally brief and simple.īiggie simply presents the most unique, astonishing, baffling body of work we’ve ever had to consider as nerds who live to argue about inane bullshit and rank things. While we debate merits and sample size and Puff, and Faith and Pac, the question isn’t “IS Biggie Smalls the Greatest rapper who ever lived?”, but “CAN Biggie Smalls BE the greatest rapper who ever lived?” If your answer is no - that there just isn’t enough to qualify him among rappers who achieved generational longevity like LL Cool J, Lil Wayne, or Jay-Z - it’s a brief and simple conversation.
When we discuss Christopher Wallace as the GOAT, we use all the wrong language and ask the wrong questions. But his monumental legacy doesn’t come from some godlike, alien greatness, but from his endlessly endearing humanity. He’s the closest thing hip hop has to a patron saint. A belt he wore and once happened to leave behind in an office at The Source took on talismanic properties, passed down from editor to editor through generations of staff at the iconic magazine. In New York, the places where he lived, where he walked, where he hung out, and where he recorded have become holy places, ordained sites. Because he died so young, and left such an impossible body of work, because of legends those who were around him in his brief lifetime continue to tell, his presence has become larger than life in our imaginations. It’s easy to lose Christopher Wallace in mythology. If you value what we do, please donate to the Patreon. Countless hours were spent writing, editing, and compiling this list.