He went from street hustler to the guy who rapped with Mary J. Blige to the guy with the bomb album that everybody had to have. The Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, aka Christopher Wallace, had arrived and was living large in the rap world as soon as Ready To Die dropped on the public along with the smash single, "Juicy." The rap business was good for The Notorious B.I.G. It took him out of the crack-dealing business and made him a rich man. When I switched, it was a business thing, he reported. If you're good at rap and I know I'm good you can make a lot of money. And so he did. Raised in the tough neighborhood of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn by his mother, a preschool teacher, Biggie dropped out of high school in his junior year and began his crack dealing career. At 17, he spent nine months in a North Carolina jail on a crack-dealing charge. I can't say I'm proud of dealing drugs, he once remarked, but you do what you have to do to survive in the hood. Live in the hood for awhile and you'll see how desperate it can make you. Drugs are always in your face, so getting into dealing is easy. But jail made him think about rap. It was just something I always did for fun, as far back as I can remember, he stated. I knew I was good at it, but I never planned for it to be a career. It started by accident doing some tapes in a basement. I wasn't sending tapes to record labels, but somebody from a record label heard a tape and eventually a record deal came out of it. He simply blew up. Hailed by critics as the "next big thing," Ready To Die raced to platinum status in the blink of an eye. But Biggie stayed real and never denounced his former life style. I'd be a hypocrite if I did that, he informed all who cared to listen and a lot did. I'm no role model. I'm not saying anybody should live their life like mine. Always brutally honest, he said: It's hard to say, but if I wasn't rapping, I'd probably be hustling to get money to take care of my family. In other words, if the money hadn't kept flown in the rap game, he would have done whatever he had to do to survive. But that was nver an option, The rap game loved him and artists lined up to work with The Notorious B.I.G. He met and married singer/songwriter Faith Evans. He kept his same friends and made new ones. Yes, he got in trouble with the law a few times, too. And then he and Tupac Shakur got into a thing. Somewhere along the line, it turned into an East Coast/West Coast thing and about that time his marriage fell on hard times, too. Faith was pregnant with his child, Tupac was dissin him on disc and hid buddy from back in the day, Lil Kim, was dissin his wife the same way. Rumors of an affair with her (which she helped to ignite), didn't help matters, either. But the music was doing fine. He helped Junior M.A.F.I.A. to make it and he had finished his second album, Life After Death...'Til Death Do Us Part. Little did he know that when he was shot down in the streets of L.A., that the album title would become his epitaph. Over two years later, no one has been arrested for his murder. And like Tupac Shakur, most feel no one ever will. Recently, after investigation into a possible involved of Suge Knight of Death Row Records fame, Death Row and Suge were cleared. So, the mystery continues. But there is no mystery as to why people loved Biggie's music. He was real. His emotional highs and lows that he conveyed so well on disc, made it impossible to get him out of your head. The fans still want more of him and so, as the magazine goes to press, Bad Boy Records prepared to release an album of Biggie's music. The Mayor of Bed-Stuy, as he was once affectionately called, lives on through his music.