Ten Years Later We Remember Big Poppa But How Far Have We Come? by Davey D This was an interview that we did with the Notorious BIG 4 days before he was killed. It was his last radio interview and it features Sway from MTV who was heading up our morning show called The Breakfest Club. Also on that interview was Sway’s partners Victor ‘Big Daddy’ Zaragoza and Foxy Brown (not the rapper). It was a telling interview that left us both concerned and somewhat inspired. I was looking over past writings and sadly I think what I penned in 1998 still applies. In many circles not much has changed. I will include it in this piece. http://www.daveyd.com/notoriousbig4.html There were a couple of the things that I was thinking about as we approached the 10th anniversary of his death. First how are his two kids doing? When Biggie did his last interview he spoke about the love he had for them. Many of us talk fondly of Big Poppa and what he meant to New York and Hip Hop in general. I have to pose the question for those who say they ride for Biggie. What sort of example have we left for his kids over the past 10 years? They are now old enough to look around and ask questions and soak up game. Can they look to our collective behavior within Hip Hop and emulate it and wind up in a good and safe place? Or do they need to turn away and look elsewhere? Have we made this Hip Hop World a better place for them? If so how? Was Biggie’s death in vain? Can his kids really look up to us? Have we really listened to the pleas his grieving mother made when she asked us to do better? Since Biggie’s death we seen damn near everyone in his crew go through big time drama with the law. From Lil Cease being busted several times for drug charges to Lil Kim being involved with a shoot out with a rival rap crew and doing jail time for perjury.(One would think hard lessons would’ve been learned about the dangers of beefs getting out of hand-now Hip Hop beefs are a big time insitution) In recent days we’ve seen his best friend P-Diddy come under investigation for assaulting a man after a Grammy party. Of course we know about all the drama he faced in the 1999 shoot out. In the aftermath of Biggie’s death we saw Jay-Z plead guilty to stabbing fellow record executive Lance Uh Rivera. We saw his friend Busta lose his friend and bodyguard to gunfire on the set of a video last year and then he himself get arrested on several occasions. Since Biggie’s death we lost Freaky Tah, Big L and a few others to violence. How far have we come? Do we continue with the same reckless behavior or do we change our ways and leave legacy that one can look back upon and note that people stepped it up in the aftermath of his killings? I’m asking this from the standpoint of having attended the historic peace gathering at Minister Farrakhan’s house a month after Biggie’s death. There all the rappers came together and pledged to move to a higher level. I sat in a room and witnessed many of our biggest starts shed tears and make heartfelt promises about how they would never allow such a tragedy to happen again. I know we have had a number of Hip Hop summits. Snoop attempted to squash west coasts beefs last year in LA. But sadly many of us still play into the hands of those who want us to destroy ourselves.Drama has continued to plague us. How have we honored The Notorious BIG in the aftermath of his death? Does it even matter? (You can read about that historic Peace summit from April 3 1997 http://www.daveyd.com/peacesummit.html The other facet that crossed my mind was the fact that ten years later his death we still have not found those responsible for his murder. We know that the corrupt cops within LAPD were involved. That has been made abundantly clear in both the trial and numerous books and articles. However since Biggie’s death police misconduct in LA and all over the country has increased tenfold. Can we say Sean Bell? Can We say Amadu Diallo? Can we say your neighbor next door in ‘any city’ USA? Have we as a Hip Hop community made moves to curtail the behavior of a force that we know played a role in his death? Sadly the answer is NO. How do we as followers of the Black Frank White are still running from the police in both our videos and in real life? Meanwhile on the other side of town, we’ve had law enforcement step up their game and form police task forces and develop Hip Hop cops. We won’t even get into the whole issue of cointel-pro, because the lessons we should’ve gleaned from that have been kick to the wayside. Ten years ago Biggie died and we said that we would never allow Hip Hop to reach such a low point. Thats what we said…What have we done? Something to Ponder Davey D Less