WEBVTT - The Ballad of Biggie and Tupac 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:03.440 Hey, everybody, We're going on tour. We're going to be 0:00:03.480 --> 0:00:06.360 in Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco soon and tickets are 0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:07.720 still available. 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:09.879 That's right, in the next few days. Actually, we're gonna 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:12.520 be in Denver on Tuesday, the twenty seventh of January. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:14.720 We're gonna be in Seattle the next night, our dear 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:16.400 beloved Seattle, and. 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.440 Then finally winding it up on Thursday the twenty ninth. 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.520 And San Francisco is part of our sketch best appearance 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:24.240 And you can get all the ticket into our information 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:25.560 at stuff youshould know dot com. 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:26.040 Isn't that right? 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:28.520 It is right, And we love you Denver, and we 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:29.920 love you San Francisco too. 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:32.320 That's right. We love all you cities and we missed 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:33.520 you and we can't wait to be back. 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:44.240 Welcome to stuff you should know, our production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:50.720 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:52.879 Chuck and Jerry's here too, so this is a good 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:56.360 old fashioned stuff you should know. One of our ongoing 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.400 hip hop editions. Yeah, I feel like a door anytime 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:03.400 I say hip hop, so I usually say rap. Yeah, 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.840 but regardless, that's what we're talking. 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.959 About Yeah, we're talking about Biggie and Tupac, and we 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:10.720 want to issue a. 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.360 Warning and a trigger warning. 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.520 No pun intended there, but this one's obviously gonna because 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.360 we're talking about the lives of these two guys who 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.720 were in many ways real gangsters. A lot of stuff 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:31.640 went down, including sexual assault and gunplay and murder, and 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.440 it's you know, it's probably not appropriate for the younger listeners, 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.200 and so you just wanted to get that out there. Hopefully, 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:40.080 if you know anything about Biggie and Tupac, you know 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:42.680 that there's some more adult content coming your way. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.760 Nice CoA man. Yeah, so, yeah, we are talking about 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.240 Biggie and Tupac, and they are pretty well known. If 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:52.480 you listen to either one of them, or even kind 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:55.480 of have a passing awareness of hip hop, especially in 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.960 the nineties, you probably know that Biggie and Tupac had 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.560 probably the biggest rivalry in the hip hop world. It's 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:06.040 referred to as a beef between one another, so much 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:10.680 so that it actually triggered, or caused, at the very 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:15.760 least popularized the East Coast versus West Coast thing of 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.480 rap in the nineteen nineties. That was huge. It was 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:22.960 the central focus of rap during basically that whole decade. 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:29.720 Yeah, and sadly would leave both of them dead from violence. 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.600 It was I hope that's not a spoiler for anyone, 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:37.840 but yeah, at very young ages. It's super sad what 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.360 happened to those guys, and just super sad that that was, 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:43.959 you know, brought about because of just sort of the 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.120 lifestyle that went along with their careers, you know. 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.480 Yeah, And a lot of people make a case that 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:55.280 that lifestyle was essentially demanded by fans and the media 0:02:55.840 --> 0:03:00.200 and certainly fostered and nurtured by fans in the media. 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.200 And so I think both Biggie and Tupac and all 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.640 the people around them and other rappers basically felt like 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.200 they had to act like they the stuff that they 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.320 wrapped about, or else they would be fake baby gangsters 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:18.079 sometimes or studio gangsters even worse. Well yeah, yeah, and 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.280 then they were also surrounded by literal bloods and crips, 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.480 so it essentially had it was inevitable that it would 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:26.200 end in death and violence. 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:27.040 Yeah. 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.680 I mean, I think hip hop more than other types 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.760 of music too, there's an expectation to be. 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:38.080 To be real again, got all these funs flying out of. 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.400 My mouth, oh from Cypress Hill. 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:42.160 Yeah, of course. 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:44.280 But to be real and like you said, not you know, 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:48.080 if you were found out to be sort of rapping 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:53.640 about something and really kind of fake in real life 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.280 like that, that's no good for your career as a 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.200 hip hop artist. So it's sort of you know, they 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.480 I don't know, to me, they're sort of victims of 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:02.920 that whole thing in a lot of ways. 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.960 Yeah, but at the same time, they definitely bought into it. Yeah, 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:10.280 I mean, they essentially laid the groundwork for that. It's 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:13.800 just it's crazy because it's just such a ubiquitous, widespread 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:16.440 thing for so long. It's strange to think that you 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:19.800 can trace it back to one group, one duo essentially. 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:22.360 Yeah, So we're going to tell you a little bit 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.640 about Tupac and his beginnings, a little bit about Biggie 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:27.920 and then once they met up kind of what happened 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:30.919 from there. But as far as Tupac goes, he was 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.080 born in nineteen seventy one, same year as me. He 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.680 was born in Harlem. His mother was a Finny Shakur 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.200 and she was one of the Panther twenty one. I'm 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:42.799 pretty sure we talked about them in the Black Panther episode, 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:46.359 but they were part of the Black Panther Party, the 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:49.839 ones who were accused of carrying out a bombing campaign. 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.760 She did win an acquittal in court defending herself and 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.520 exposed a lot of stuff about undercover cops and the 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:01.000 tactics they used that were very untoward. But Tupac was 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:06.599 born about a month after that trial and born Lesaine Crooks. 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.200 But it's not like he changed his name to be 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:11.760 a cool hip hop guy later. He was actually renamed 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.279 by his mom when he was about a year old, 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:19.840 after indigenous South American revolutionary Tupac Amaru the second, So 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.080 he's essentially he was always Tupac. 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:26.960 Yeah, he was named after an eighteenth century Incon I believe, 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:30.599 who led a rebellion against the Spanish. Little known fact. 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.359 I didn't know that, did you. I did not, So 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.240 I usually think I associate Tupac with New York because 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.479 pretty much all the movies he was ever in were 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.320 all set in New York. But he's from San Francisco. 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:45.120 I mean, he was born in Harlem, but his family 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.120 moved to San Francisco, or actually Marin County, which is 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:52.279 a suburb of San Francisco pretty early on in his life, 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.640 and at the time, his mom was struggling with a 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.039 crack addiction, So Tupac was essentially on his own from 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.800 a very young age, and as black kids at the 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.520 time in the eighties in particular, did to make money 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:09.239 when you were in a situation like that, he sold 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.000 drugs and that's how he supported himself for a long 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.000 time while he was even going through school too. 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.599 Yeah, and he was like, we'll see, Biggie was he 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:20.920 was a really good English student, and I bet a 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.440 lot of hip hop performers were good in English. You know, 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.320 it just sort of makes sense. But he dropped out 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.760 of high school. He studied poetry. He continued to after 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:34.080 he dropped out, and actually his teacher, his English teacher, 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.400 one of them, Leela Steinberg, was like, hey, I see 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:39.599 a lot of potential in you. You can crash on 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.320 my couch when you need to, And she ended up 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:43.680 becoming his first manager. 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:45.840 Yeah, and she said, you always have to wear that 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.520 bandana around your head just so like you because I 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:50.120 love it. 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:51.240 It looks super cool. 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:54.600 I know we've also talked about this before, but he 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.520 was a member of Digital Underground with Humpty Hump of 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.640 the famous Humpty Dance. He's shown dancing in the Humpty 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:04.000 Dance video in the background. He was a dancer for 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.640 Digital Underground, but later I think wrapped on some of 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:10.160 their albums. Yeah, but even from the outset, his whole 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:14.920 vibe was much much edgier than Humpty Humps was. Like 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.360 Humpty Hump was rapping about how big his nose was 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:21.239 and having sex and burger king bathrooms, right like Tupac 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.640 was rapping about what poverty and crime are like in 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:25.680 the black community. 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:28.320 You know, he didn't go by Humpty Hump. 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:30.200 What was this? Why do You Go Buy? 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:31.480 That was shock G. 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.480 I've heard him referred to on other songs as. 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:40.120 Well, all right, aka Humpty Hump. So yeah, you weren't 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:40.800 completely wrong. 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.120 A little side. I would direct people to the mrs 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.880 song Risky Business that features Humpty or shock G. It's 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.680 a pretty pretty cute little song, all right. So Tupac 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:56.600 goes out on his own. He's got, like I said, 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.400 a totally different vibe, and he released a solo album 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:03.000 called Tupac Ellipse. Now, there was no other title that 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:06.360 it could have possibly been than that, Yeah, for sure, 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.040 But the problem was like there was. He was keeping 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.440 it real, so there was nothing in the studio that 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.960 he was producing that could be played on the radio. Yeah, 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:20.559 so it was an underground sensation, but publicly, most people 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:22.400 had not heard of Tupac at that point. 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:23.880 Yeah, for sure. 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:28.200 Dan Quayle kind of gave him a little more press 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.480 when he blamed that record to Apocalypse Now on the 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.520 shooting of a Texas State trooper. So he was in 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:35.920 the news a little bit at least mm hm. And 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.920 he started acting kind of right afterward. In nineteen ninety 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.480 two and nineteen ninety three, he put out where he 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.960 was in the movies Juice and Poetic Justice, both really 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.720 great movies. Juice is awesome, actually, so is Poetic Justice. 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:49.680 I love both of those movies. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:51.800 The one I've seen him and I don't think. I 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.240 think I saw Juice. I didn't see Poetic Justice. I 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.040 saw Above the Rim. He was really good, and Above 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:57.600 the Rim. 0:08:57.640 --> 0:08:58.600 I never saw that one. 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:00.360 Oh that's a good one. He should see it. 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:03.400 Wet them together and have a Tupac watch party. 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:04.680 I guess, Okay, let's do that. 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:06.000 Yeah. 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.559 But he started getting a little more famous, sort of slowly, 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:12.400 and this is when kind of the early nineties, at 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:14.640 the very beginning of his career is when he first 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:19.040 started getting into trouble and getting like a real reputation 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:21.520 as sort of living that lifestyle. 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.040 Yeah, I mean, like for real. He was involved in 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:29.160 a shootout at the Marin County Festival where he lived, 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.520 where he had just performed, that killed a six year 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:34.920 old who was playing on a school ground nearby. 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:36.560 Yeah. 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:40.200 He shot at off duty police in Atlanta in nineteen 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.080 ninety three when he tried to prevent them from beating 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:46.480 up a black motorist, and those charges were thrown out 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:48.920 because it turns out the cops were off duty, didn't 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:53.200 announce themselves as cops, and were super drunk. But you know, 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.560 those kind of things, like his legend as like a 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.520 thug living the thug life, which I think he basically coined, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:06.640 that just formed, melded really quickly right out of the gate, 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.959 Like this guy was legit as far as his fans 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:10.600 were concerned. 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.120 Yeah, for sure. So that's Tupac's early days. 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.719 Biggie Smalls was born he's a little younger. He's born 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:20.840 in nineteen seventy two in Brooklyn. His name was Christopher Wallace. 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:25.120 He was born to Jamaican immigrant parents, and his mom 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.839 was a preschool teacher. His dad was a politician in 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.120 Jamaica but ended up, you know, leaving when he was 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.280 two years old and became a welder in the United States. 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.600 But her, his mom, you know, Veletta, really thought a 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.480 lot about education, obviously as a teacher, so she took 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.680 on a second job just so she could send him 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.600 to a very well regarded high school and then later 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:49.920 went to George Westinghouse Career in Tech Education High School, 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:52.320 which had quite an alumni base as far as hip 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:56.160 hop goes, because DMX, Buster Rhymes, Love Busta, and jay 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:57.079 Z all went there. 0:10:57.520 --> 0:10:59.800 Yeah, I'm guessing I didn't. I wasn't able to find it, 0:10:59.880 --> 0:11:02.160 but I'm guessing they crossed paths. May have been there 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:02.920 at the same time. 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.800 Yeah, I mean, Donald Glover would have gone to my 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.000 high school had they not sent him to the School 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.760 of the Arts. Oh yeah, And I saw him in 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:14.680 New York City a few feet from me when I 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:17.560 was there in December. And let me tell you, dude, 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:19.320 I don't know if I've ever seen a more handsome 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:21.360 grown man in person. 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:22.080 With my eyeballs. 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:27.000 Really, he's astoundingly good looking, and I wanted to go 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.079 over and say, like, hey man, we grew up in 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:30.640 the same neighborhood basically. 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.240 And you're really good looking, You're really handsome. 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:35.600 But he I'm such a big fan of his but 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:37.800 from his music to his acting. But he was with 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.520 his family and like it was just like, I'm just 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:41.240 not going to do that. 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:45.240 Instead, you got in your car and shouted Dan high 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.200 rules and like laid rubber peeling out of the parking lot. 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.839 Yeah that's right. Sure, Danger Mouse went to my high 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:52.440 school too, though. 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:55.200 Oh yeah, oh I forgot about Danger Mouse. Danger Mouse 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.400 did that gray album with the Beatles, and. 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.840 Right, I don't know, we'll. 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:09.160 Find out the hard way. So, like you said, a 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:11.960 lot of hip hop artists are probably or probably were 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.920 our good English students, and Biggie Smalls was not an 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.160 exception to that. Like Tupac, he was. Actually he excelled 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:23.360 in English and high school. But also like Tupac, his 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:26.760 family was not exactly well to do. Remember, his mom 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.200 took a second job to put him just through high school. 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:33.000 So he started selling drugs on the side, crack again 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.959 because it's the eighties, and eventually he dropped out of 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.920 high school, and I think any kind of straight and 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:43.000 narrow he might have been on from high school was 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.400 just kind of removed and he started to get in 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.800 like actual trouble with the cops. 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:50.800 Yeah, he ended up in jail, actually spent nine months 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.720 in jail at one point because it couldn't make bail. 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.520 And once he got out, he made a demo tape 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.280 under the name Biggie Smalls. His nickname as a kid 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.680 was big, but I think that came from a gangster 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:04.720 in a movie from nineteen seventy five called Let's Do 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.840 It Again. Biggie Smalls did, and he said that he 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:10.000 wasn't trying to get into a career, he just sort 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:14.280 of did it for fun, and that got him on 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:18.160 Source magazine's list in nineteen ninety two of Unsigned in 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.320 their Unsigned hype Columneah, which eventually put him on a 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:26.080 compilation with other Unsigned rappers, which eventually landed him on 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:27.880 the ears of a twenty. 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:30.439 Three year old named named Sean Combs. 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:34.240 So yeah, Shawn Combs, puff Daddy did he People have 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:36.720 probably heard of him by now for all sorts of reasons. 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:39.760 His career as a twenty three year old was as 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:46.240 vice president of Uptown Records, and being an entrepreneur and 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.160 all sorts of other things, he decided to found his 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:54.000 own record company, bad Boy Worldwide Music Group usually known 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.560 as bad Boy Records, and one of the first things 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.720 he did was sign Biggie Small's and they became paired 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.160 up in the media. They hung out there, friends, They 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.600 were fairly close, but like those two were inseparable as 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.600 far as like the public was concerned whether that was 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:10.560 fully true or not. 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:13.839 Yeah and his when he put out his first single, 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:18.240 it was under the name Notorious Big because of legal issues. 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.280 I guess with the movie Yeah Biggie Smalls was that 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.240 my take you? Okay? So he was Notorious Big Ig 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:26.360 officially everyone called him Biggie. Of course. 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:29.840 He had as a kid in ninety three with his 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:34.880 high school girlfriend jan Jackson, not Jana Jackson, and he 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:37.320 hadn't really broken through at this point, even though he 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:41.640 was with Shawn Combs at the time. But he you know, 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.440 so he continued to kind of deal drugs, apparently colms. 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:46.000 It was like, he can't do that kind of stuff 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:47.080 if you want to get anywhere. 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:50.040 But he broke up with his. 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:53.800 High school sweetheart who he had his first kid with 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.440 and a few months after that ended up with Faith Evans. 0:14:57.200 --> 0:14:58.680 Who was also on the Bad Boy label. 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:03.040 And that is is Biggie and his start, So good 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:03.720 time for a break. 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.520 Yeah, we're at nineteen ninety three, Tupac's already a star 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:08.960 and Biggie's starting to come up. 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:10.560 All right, We'll be right back. 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:14.360 As why why Why s K as big. 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:34.160 Tough. He should know, definitely should know, Charles s K. So. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:36.080 One of the things you may or may not know, 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.880 if you're just kind of passing passingly familiar with the 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.280 beef between Biggie and Tupac, is that they started out 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:46.320 as friends. They were actually pretty good friends for a while. Tupac, 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:49.080 like I said, before he broke, was already a star. 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.280 His star was established and still growing. Biggie was just 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.480 starting to come up. He was pretty pretty well known 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.360 around New York, and Tupac kind of became a mentor 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.760 to him. They met in nineteen ninety three, and they 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:04.720 hung out with a bunch of other people, played around 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.200 with a bunch of guns at Tupac's house, and they 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.200 became close enough that whenever Biggie went out to la 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:13.560 he stayed on Tupac's couch. 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:14.640 That's right. 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.560 Uh, he was, like I said, he was a He 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.760 kind of considered Biggie like one of his lieutenants at 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.840 the time and definitely was a mentor. Biggie's debut came out, 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:27.160 it was called Ready to Die in nineteen ninety four, 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:32.320 and before that, Biggie was like, you know what, I 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:34.360 think you should just be my manager and take over 0:16:34.480 --> 0:16:38.120 from takeover for Shawn Combs, and Tupac was like, no, man, 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:42.240 you need to stick with that guy. Apparently Tupac wasn't 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.200 a big fan of Combs. Yeah, but you know he 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.000 said that I had a feeling he just didn't want 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:49.720 to get into managing him. 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:52.040 Well, he said, he'll make you a star, and I 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.480 think he did know that. Like, you know, Tupac wasn't 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:56.880 a manager or a label owner. Like he was a 0:16:57.120 --> 0:17:00.520 performer and Sean Combs liked the thing think of himself 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:02.800 as a performer, but really he was an executive. So 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.360 it probably was the smarter move to stay with him, 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.600 at least at first, right. Yeah, the problem was is 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:14.840 Seawn Combs again remember inextricably linked BFF with Biggie as 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.320 far as the public's concerned, was actually jealous of Biggie 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.000 and Tupac's friendship. He wanted to be friends with Tupac. 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:23.760 He was jealous that Bickie got to be friends with Tupac. 0:17:24.080 --> 0:17:28.000 The reason Tupac didn't care about being friends with Sean 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:32.240 Combs is that he thought Shawn Combs was basically a poser. 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:36.000 He was a record executive, playing like he was a 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.840 hardcore rapper, and he didn't have much respect for him. 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:43.000 And I think that really kind of came through to 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.720 Shawn Combs after a little while, and he didn't he 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:48.320 started not liking Tupac. 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:49.600 Yeah, that's right. 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:52.119 So the beef is sort of the beef seed is 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.000 planted as they are, you know that old saying. 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:57.600 Where's the beef seed? 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.600 It's been exactly red to die. Like I mentioned, was 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.120 Biggie's debut in ninety four. It was a big hit 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:08.200 that went double platinum about a year later, which means 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.080 a lot of records were sold. And this was when 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:14.280 the West Coast was sort of like all the big 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:16.320 hip hop stars were mainly out of the West Coast, 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:18.480 so he was kind of the biggest thing coming out 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.359 of New York right off the bat. And it's a 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.399 great record, he was you know, he rapped a lot 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:27.800 about you know, sort of like the lifestyle and the 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.439 gangs of stuff that he was doing. But also there 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:31.600 was a lot of vulnerability on that first record too. 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.280 Yeah. Yeah, he and Tupac wasn't shy about rapping about 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:38.720 mental health and stuff like that. And up to this point, 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:41.440 like you did not talk about that kind of stuff. 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.040 It was all about partying and having sex and like 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:46.080 doing drugs and all that stuff. You didn't talk about 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.639 being paranoid or like super worried about being killed or 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.880 anything like that. And I just to kind of set 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:54.760 the scene, can we talk a little bit about the 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.240 brief history of hip hop up to that point and 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:01.240 how big of a deal it was when Ready to 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:04.919 Die came out, Sure, because you said that the West 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.680 Coast had kind of taken over from the East Coast, 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.040 like from Slick Rick and ll cool J and all 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:12.480 them the ones who were coming up in the eighties. 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.680 At the time that Biggie Small's record came out, everyone 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:21.440 was all about Doctor dre Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, all 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:23.959 these guys, like that's where rap was. It was on 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.240 the West Coast. So for somebody to come along and 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.560 basically snatch that away and bring it back to New York. 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:33.080 It was just a really big deal. And it took 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:38.240 a rapper of the caliber of Biggie Smalls to do 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.359 something like that, because there are tons of other albums 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:43.440 that had come out, like Tribe Called Quest had three 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:49.000 albums by this time, and yet the Biggie Small's record 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:53.280 coming out just completely undid essentially caused an earthquake in 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.240 the rap world and tilted everything back to New York. 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:57.680 Yeah, for sure. 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.800 So as this is happening and Biggie's blowing up like 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:05.480 in a big way, Tupac is in New York filming 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.639 a movie in nineteen ninety three and we get a 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:10.560 new guy on the scene, or he was actually on 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:11.919 the scene, but a new guy as far as his 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:16.280 podcast goes named Haitian Jack, and he starts hanging out 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:16.800 with Tupac. 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.399 Tupac likes this guy. They start partying together. 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:24.080 Biggie knows about Haitian Jack because he was pretty familiar 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.359 with the street gangs of New York, and he warns 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:28.359 his friend Tupac and he's like, man, this guy is 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:30.920 real trouble. So like you got to watch out. You 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:33.040 should probably stay away from this guy because like he's 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:36.000 a super violent dude. Like, I know, we're all real, 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.639