Biggie was buried on Tuesday, March 18, in his native New York City. With thousands cheering along the route, his casket was driven through the impoverished streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant where he was raised. Some onlookers jumped onto parked cars and began dancing to his music, blaring from ghetto blasters. Ten people were arrested for disorderly conduct.

  • • •

  The similarities in the lives and deaths of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls are striking.

  Like Tupac, Christopher Wallace was born in Brooklyn and grew up on the streets of Bed-Stuy. They both were raised by single mothers. Biggie’s mother, Voletta Wallace, a Jamaican national, was a preschool teacher. His father, also Jamaican, left when Christopher was two. But unlike Tupac’s troubled and impoverished childhood, Voletta said she tried to raise her son in a stable wholesome environment.

  Mrs. Wallace said that her son was once an honor-roll student at Queen of All Saints middle school.

  “According to what I’ve read, he’s some hooligan from a single-parent household in a run-down ghetto walk-up. There are plenty of intelligent good-hearted kids from single-parent homes, and I always had a beautiful apartment. He has never gone hungry. He never went without.”

  Tupac, too, had been a good student.

  Despite his mother’s best efforts, Biggie succumbed to the lure of the street. He dropped out of high school at 17 to sell drugs. So did Tupac.

  “When he quit school, I wanted to kill him,” Voletta said. “Finally, when he was eighteen, I said, ‘If you can’t live by my rules, you can’t live under my roof.’ I don’t care if I was cold. If I had to do it all over again, I would.”

  At that age, Biggie was cocky. “I was full-time, a hundred-percent hustler,” says one of Biggie’s rap songs. “Sellin’ drugs, waking up early in the morning, hitting the set selling any shit till the crack of dawn. My mother goin’ to work would see me out there in the morning. That’s how I was on it.”

  Biggie and Tupac each lived the life of a street gangster before either had broken into the music business. Biggie had gone from the street to the studio. He made his debut on Mary J. Blige’s remixes of “Real Love” and “What’s the 411?” He appeared in Supercat’s video, “Dolly My Baby.” His first single was “Party and Bullshit.” His first album, Ready to Die, went platinum for Bad Boy Entertainment, selling more than one million copies. He was honored as “Rap Artist of the Year” at the 1995 Billboard Awards.

  “He was the king of rap on the East Coast, definitely, without a question,” said rap music promoter Peter Thomas, during a “Prime Time Live” interview.

  Like Tupac, Biggie had trouble with the law (although not nearly as onerous).

  In August 1996, Biggie was charged with gun and marijuana possession. Police had staked out Biggie’s Teaneck, New Jersey, condominium, then raided it. Undercover officers confiscated a rifle with an infrared sighting scope. Besides that, according to a police report, officers netted a cache of marijuana, a submachine gun, several semiautomatic handguns, a revolver, and a large quantity of ammunition, including hollow-point rounds.

  Then, on September 15, 1996, two days after Tupac died, Biggie was caught smoking marijuana while sitting in his parked luxury car on a Brooklyn street. For the second time in a month, he was charged with drug possession.

  Most bizarre, however, was that both Biggie and Tupac had predicted their own deaths in their last albums, both of which were released posthumously. In his song “You’re Nobody,” Biggie raps, “You’re nobody, Till somebody kills you.” Both Tupac’s Makaveli and Biggie’s Life After Death albums sold out the first week. Biggie’s final album surpassed the Beatles’ last album in record sales.

  • • •

  As in life, so too in death.

  Both Tupac and Biggie were gunned down in drive-by shootings—Tupac was 25 when he was killed; Biggie was 24. Both had hired off-duty cops to guard them the night they were killed. Lieutenant Ross Moen of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Wilshire division, which first handled Biggie’s murder investigation, said the Blazer carrying Biggie’s security guards chased after the gunman’s vehicle for a few blocks, but lost it before they could get a license-plate number. The same thing happened after the Tupac shooting; several cars chased the Cadillac, police said, but none was able to catch it or get a plate number. Or, if they did, they didn’t report it to the cops.

  When Tupac was shot, record-label-owner Suge Knight had driven with him away from the crime scene, ostensibly headed for a hospital. When Biggie was shot, his record-label CEO, Sean Combs, told his bodyguard to drive away from the scene and head to the hospital.

  Also similar to the Tupac shooting, Biggie’s murder was witnessed by scores of people. Biggie’s estranged wife Faith Evans, dozens of partygoers, security guards, and parking attendants witnessed the shooting. But just as in the Las Vegas investigation, police initially said they had no description of the gunman and that witnesses were afraid to talk.

  “It’s frustrating,” Detective Raymond Futami, one of 20 investigators assigned to the Biggie case, told reporters. “I’m sure there’s a little bit of an intimidation factor ... because of the reputation of some of the people who are involved in the case.”

  Two witnesses in the Smalls case were able to help police. Unlike the members of Tupac’s entourage, two of the men sitting with Biggie in his Suburban that night provided enough information for a police artist to sketch a detailed composite drawing.

  The first composite drawing was rendered one day after the murder. It shows a black man with a heart-shaped face, a light trimmed mustache, and a receding hairline. He was wearing an Oxford shirt and a dark bowtie. LAPD Lieutenant Moen described the suspect as a “young male African-American in his early twenties.” The second drawing, done 18 days after the shooting, shows a thin, older, light-skinned black man, which was circulated to media and police departments nationwide.

  However, the first composite sketch, drawn a day after the murder, didn’t make it into the hands of the media until it was slipped to reporters at the Los Angeles Times 36 months later. Because the murder had been committed with such precision and ease, an easy deduction was that it involved a professional, perhaps even a cop.

  The reason for two composite sketches, one released to the media, the other held, was never disclosed.

  Detectives began looking at one of their own. Not until the L.A. Times wrote a story breaking the fact that ex-police officer David Mack and Suge Knight were under investigation and suspected by police of orchestrating the hit was the composite sketch released to the public. Neither composite resembled Mack.

  Attorneys for both Mack and Suge strongly rejected the notion that their clients were involved in Biggie’s murder. Robin J. Yanes, Suge’s attorney, said this: “A year ago it came up and now they’re recycling it to cover their butts.”

  As in the Tupac shooting, police said they believed the gunman had an accomplice.

  Early on, investigators considered the theory that Biggie Smalls’ death may have been payback for Tupac Shakur’s slaying.

  “We believe it was gang-related,” Lieutenant Moen said. “We believe that it was premeditated, that he was targeted for the purpose of killing him. The way it went down, it was a targeted hit.”

  One of the scenarios was that Biggie was rumored to have gone the week before his murder to South Park, a hangout for the South Side Crips, and that Crips members had tried unsuccessfully to get money from him.

  Lieutenant Moen added during a news conference: “We’re investigating possible connections to other murders in New York, Atlanta, and L.A. We can’t ignore the fact that there have been a number of murders involving rap singers recently.”

  In another development, about two weeks after the shooting, L.A. police seized a videotape in Houston they felt could help them find Biggie’s assailant.

  “We expect the tape to give us some key information. We’re hoping the tape is going to assist in having people come forward to identify the shooter for us,” Moen told the Houston Chronicle. A Houston woman, who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, told the Chronicle the tape was filmed by a group of Houston residents who were in Los Angeles for the Soul Train Music awards. In a telephone interview, Moen said he couldn’t reveal what detectives had learned from viewing the videotape, because it was evidence in the ongoing investigation.

  L.A. Homicide Detective Harper (who wouldn’t give his first name), said, “The tape is just one in a million things we’re doing in the investigation.” In the end, the tape didn’t provide any evidence.

  There were rumors that Biggie was under federal surveillance just before the shooting, but they were unsubstantiated and probably “not true,” said Lieutenant Pat Conman.

  “I have no idea what the feds are doing, but to my knowledge, that’s not true,” Conman said in a telephone interview. “I have no knowledge that Biggie Smalls was under surveillance by the feds.”

  But the Los Angeles Times reported that undercover officers from New York were in the vicinity at the time of the shooting as part of a federal investigation of criminals thought to have connections to Bad Boy Entertainment. And it was rumored that at least one member of a federal task force investigating the rap industry was at the Petersen Automotive Museum the night of the party.

  Conman also said that members of LVMPD’s homicide team investigating Tupac’s murder had been in touch with LAPD detectives about Biggie’s murder, “but just in the normal course of business. I believe detectives have had some conversations with them. They’re following the case.”

  Unlike investigators in Tupac’s murder case, Los Angeles police early on were optimistic about cracking Biggie’s slaying and publicly stated that they expected to make an arrest.

  “I can tell you we are going to make an arrest,” Lieutenant Moen said at a news conference two weeks after Biggie’s slaying. “I cannot tell you when we are going to make that arrest. There’s a lot left to be done yet in this investigation.”

  But six weeks after Biggie’s death, Homicide Lieutenant Conman admitted that there was nothing new in the case. “We have just a few leads we’re following up,” Conman told me. “There’s nothing startling to report.”

  Detective Harper pointed out that “people are afraid and don’t want to talk to us. People [rappers] have careers to look after.”

  In stark contrast to the Tupac investigation and LVMPD’s three-man homicide team, LAPD assigned a team of 20 investigators, who identified and interviewed nearly 200 witnesses. “We didn’t need any more,” LVMPD’s Manning said. “They [L.A. police] gathered as much information in their case, with all their people, as we did in ours. The more people involved, the more things get lost. You have a communications problem.”

  Six months later, 20 officers were still involved in Biggie’s investigation. Nearly six years later, though, two detectives, a sergeant, and a lieutenant were assigned to the case, one of many in their total workload.

  • • •

  Biggie and Tupac once counted each other as friends. Biggie’s childhood friend, Abraham Widdi, told me that he, Biggie, and Tupac sometimes drank beer and threw dice together at Hodgie’s corner saloon on Fulton Street in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy. But the two had a falling out after Tupac accused Biggie of copying his style and, later, of setting him up in the 1994 shooting at Quad Studios in Manhattan.

  San Francisco deejay Sway, in a telephone interview from his San Francisco radio studio, had this to say: “The Biggie thing, Tupac told me, is what he heard. He knew Biggie didn’t pull the trigger [at the Manhattan studio]. There were allegations in the air that Biggie had something to do with it, but I don’t think Tupac knew who did it.”

  When Tupac was in prison, people sent him letters saying Biggie’s homeboys had something to do with the shooting. In Tupac’s mind, that scenario grew stronger as more and more people told him that. From that moment on, the two were at odds with each other. Their record labels were rivals during the same time. As early as 1994, Biggie told the Chicago Tribune, “I’m scared to death. Scared of getting my brains blown out.”

  By then bitter enemies, Tupac and Biggie taunted each other, and they used their music to do it.

  After accusing Biggie of stealing his lyrics, Tupac stole Biggie’s wife, Faith Evans, or at least he claimed to have slept with her.

  Tupac rapped, “I fucked your bitch, you fat mothafucka. You claim to be a playah, but I fucked your wife.” (Biggie and Faith were separated at the time; Biggie was seeing other women, including rapper Lil’ Kim, or Kimberly Jones, when he was killed.).

  Biggie rapped right back in his solo album, “Dumb rappers need teachin’, Lesson A, don’t fuck with B-I-G, that’s that.” But Biggie claimed the lyrics had nothing to do with Tupac.

  In a Miramax documentary titled Rhyme or Reason, Biggie talked about his dispute with Tupac and said it was just a coincidence. “We two individual people, you know what I’m saying?” he explained. “One man against one man made a whole West Coast hate a whole East Coast, and vice versa.”

  The situation with Tupac was “blown up to much more than it was,” he told The Source magazine. “They’d gone and made a personal beef between me and [Tupac and Death Row] into a coastal beef, East against West. And that’s crazy. That’s bananas right there.” He said he still planned to go to California, because “they got the women, the weed, and the weather.”

  Biggie blamed the media for the hype.

  “I never did nothin’ wrong to nobody,” he said. “I ain’t never did nothin’ wrong to Tupac, I ain’t never did nothin’ wrong to Faith. ... And I kept quiet. I kept my mouth shut. I figure if I had been the one sittin’ here riffin’ it’d seem like I’d had a point to prove. I know I ain’t done nothin’ so it don’t make no sense for me to say nothin’. I just let everybody do they thing.”

  After Tupac was killed, Biggie told Spin magazine’s Sia Michel, “I had nothing to do with any of that Tupac shit. That’s a complete and total misconception. I definitely wouldn’t wish death on anyone. I’m sorry he’s gone. That dude was nice on the mike.”

  Biggie’s mother, Voletta Wallace, said, too, that her son had nothing to do with Tupac’s death. She was also adamant that her son’s murder had nothing to do with Tupac’s death. “I don’t think my son’s death was connected to Tupac. And I don’t think Christopher had anything to do with Tupac’s death,” said Mrs. Wallace, who told me during an interview from her New Jersey home that Biggie’s friends had told her that.

  “The other thing I heard was that the shot was not meant for my son. The shot was meant for Puffy. My son was supposed to leave for London the same day he was killed. Puffy [Combs] asked him to stay. He didn’t want to stay [in L.A.]. He had to go to a party he didn’t want to go to. The only reason he was in L.A. was to help Puffy finish an album.”

  For his part, Tupac, in a Vibe interview, once described Biggie as his brother.

  “Regardless of all this stuff—no matter what he say, what I say—Biggie’s still my brother. He’s black. He’s my brother. We just have a conflict of interest. We have a difference of opinion,” he said.

  “I don’t want it to be about violence. I want it to be about money. I told Suge my idea: Bad Boy make a record with all the East Coast niggas. Death Row make a record with all the West Coast niggas. We drop the records on the same day. Whoever sell the most records, that’s who the bombest. And then we stop battling. We could do pay-per-views for charity, for the community.

  “That’s as together as we can get. For money. What about getting together as black men? We are together as black men—they over there, we over here. If we really gonna live in peace, we all can’t be in the same room.”

  Writer Kevin Powell said he thought Biggie was an unfortunate innocent bystander in the Death Row-Bad Boy feud.

  “Suge definitely encouraged that,” Powell said. “It sells records, definitely. What record label—think about it—when in the history of music has a song like ‘Hit ’Em Up’ been put out? People heard the record. It was ridiculous. Tupac says he slept with Biggie’s wife, Faith. There’s a song on Biggie’s new album. It’s called ‘Notorious Thug.’ He says, ‘I have a so-called beef with you-know-who.’ He doesn’t even say Tupac’s name.

  “I really feel deep down in my heart that Biggie just happened to be an innocent bystander and he caught the brunt of it,” Powell said in an interview from his Brooklyn home. “Black kids, the young black people on the East Coast, are very different from the West. I can go to Harlem, I can go to Staten Island or Queens. It’s not like a big deal. We’ve never claimed East Coast like they claim West Coast in California. New York is not the East Coast. You have Connecticut, Florida, other states. I know for a fact that a lot of kids in the East love West Coast music. I do. Biggie was the first East Coast artist in a long time who was able to transcend those boundaries. People here are petrified of going to California at this point. No one knows where it’s coming from. The running joke is, whoever is mentioned in Tupac’s last album, they are scared to death. You don’t know who’s doing the killings. You don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s scary, man.”

  KMEL’s Sway said, “The media has done a very poor job of reporting the truth and kind of printed what they wanted to print in order to sell papers. There’s no such thing as an East-West war. There are individuals who had conflicts. It’s not the coast of a country against a coast of a country. It’s easier to print that. The coasts are divided by the media.”

  “It’s a sad world,” commented Peter Thomas, a rap music promoter, “where you can’t even go out and enjoy a party like everyone else because you think somebody’s going to kill you. You’re not just talking to an individual. You’re talking to a complete community, and in that community there’s a lot of people who have absolutely no sense, but they do have a .45.”