In My Write Mind

[Editor’s Note: Yes, it’s actually been nine years since we lost Chris. This article originally appears in the March 2005 edition of The Flow magazine.]

“It Was All A Dream”

by William I. Dawson

Eight years. EIGHT YEARS! Eight years of contemplation and recollection. Eight years of frustration and meditation. It’s been eight years without answers, eight years of empty promises, eight years of contradictions and bewilderment. Eight long years of ‘if’ and ‘but’, but no why, where and when.

It’s been eight years since the world lost Christopher Wallace. Eight years since the demise of the Notorious B.I.G. Eight long years with no punishment for his murder. No retribution. No closure. It had to be a dream. A bad one. A nightmarish dream that lingered long after we woke up.

In the words of the late, great rapper from Brooklyn, it’s unbelievable.

At least it is to me. After all these years, I still remember it like it was yesterday. Still remember where I was (New York), what I was doing when I first heard (lying in bed), how I reacted (half dropped jaw, half teary-eyed), how I felt (in shock and sick to my stomach). I remember the somberness that enveloped New York at the time. One of our soldiers was dead. Killed senselessly a coast away.

We all took it personally.

We had to. We weren’t going to just miss Biggie Smalls, the artist. We would miss what he meant, what he represented, what he was about to become. We would miss the greatness that came with being the cream of the crop. The majesty. The heights. The whole city, which now seemed like a neighborhood—we must’ve been dreaming.

That day on the radio, listeners called in to Hot 97, voices shaken, hearts broken, heads ached. The deejays weren’t much better. They were having the same bad dream, the same nightmare. At times the silence on the airwaves was deafening. The effect that this one death, that Sunday morning some eight years ago, had on so many people …was palpable.

He was only 24, but had done so much. He went from awkward child running wild, one who was ready to die living by the Ten Crack Commandments, one who loved the dough, to one who was hypnotized by the ability to rhyme, one who had the sky as his only limit, one who had a story to tell. He thought he’d survived the coastal war that exploded during Tupac’s final days, the war that placed blame on B.I.G. and Puff when Pac was murdered less than a year before.

He thought he’d made it through those days, thought he could go back to Cali to represent the east, to promote his upcoming double disc.

For him, it was all a dream.

He thought that the worst that could happen was over with, still recovering from a broken leg that was suffered earlier that year. He thought this new disc would make him a legend in his own time. And New York thought the same thing. We dreamt of Biggie Smalls transforming all the way from hood rat to top dog. And he was on his way. On his way to the top.

Eight years ago.

That day in March, that sunny and clear Sunday morning in New York, was eerily quiet. His appearance on the Soul Train Awards the night before was greeted with a mixture of cheers and boos by the audience in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. B.I.G. was hampered by the leg, but still did his thing on stage. New York was back. Back after the war. Back after the beef. Back after Biggie ripped the mic on the Saturday before he was murdered.

That’s what I remember about that weekend. That’s what sprung to mind on that Sunday morning when news of a young man’s death brought communities to their knees. He was the future for many rappers, the same young men that started where he started, slinging rock for profit, being where he was and dreaming of going where he was headed.

That was the best, the B.I.G.gest dream of all. One that turned into a horrible nightmare.

It’s been eight years without a suspect or a motive in the death of Christopher Wallace, out of Brooklyn and on his way to B.I.G. things. It’s been eight years since “the greatest rapper alive” left us tragically. It’s been eight years of head-scratching, of chalking it up to the game, of apparent inertia on the part of the LAPD. Blatant. Calculated. Deliberate. In fact, there have been more documentaries made regarding the murder (1) than arrests (0).

The search for justice has been all a dream.

Now, eight years later, on March 9th, the day that Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls aka Notorious B.I.G. took his last breath, eight years and one day after he performed his final song, that same cloud that engulfed a city remains, a dark, dreary cloud that will seemingly hover overhead in a limitless sky for eternity.

If this is all a dream … somebody please. Wake me up.

Rest in peace, B.I.G.
We’ll always love Big Poppa.