Bullet-riddled rap Specter of feud haunts B.I.G.'s death Is the rivalry

escalating despite so-called truce?

Bruce Haring

03/10/1997

USA Today

FINAL

Page 01D

LOS ANGELES -- On the surface, the war between East and West Coast rappers

seemed to be cooling.

A February truce meeting called on TV's The Steve Harvey Show brought

together New York record mogul Sean ``Puffy'' Combs and L.A. rap icon Snoop

Doggy Dogg to call for an end to the bitterness and hatred between the coasts.

Sunday, on radio airwaves, among record execs and fans, speculation was that

not everyone was paying attention.

New York rapper Christopher Wallace -- whose stage name was the Notorious

B.I.G. and nickname was Biggie Smalls -- died in a drive-by shooting at age 24

early Sunday after he and his entourage exited a Vibe magazine party here. His

death came almost six months to the day after West Coast rap star Tupac Shakur

was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip at age 25. That killing still is unsolved.

The motive in each case is unclear; Sunday, a Los Angeles police spokesman

said there were few leads and no suspects in Wallace's death.

Rap observers wondered whether the killing was retaliatory -- another salvo in a

feud between East and West Coast rappers. Wallace, a self-admitted former

crack dealer in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, was considered a

Shakur rival.

Shakur had accused him of involvement in a 1994 robbery in which Shakur was

shot and lost $40,000 in jewelry. Wallace was angered at Shakur's claim that he

had slept with the woman in Wallace's life, singer Faith Evans.

``I thought Tupac was going to be the end of it. But the psychodrama keeps

going,'' a distraught Quincy Jones told USA TODAY Sunday from his Bel-Air,

Calif., home. His Vibe magazine, which chronicles hip-hop music, stars and

issues, staged Saturday's party for 1,500 guests, but Jones did not attend.

In the rap world, where stars boast of living the thug life, the killing is ``life

imitating art,'' Jones says. ``I don't know what this was about. I thought the

East-West stuff was all settled.''

Meshack Blaq, editor and publisher of the Los Angeles based Kronick, the

Underground Chronicle, which covers the rap scene, was one of the last people

to see Wallace alive. Blaq walked out of the event with him at approximately

12:45 a.m. Sunday. They walked to two green Suburbans. Wallace's record-label

chief, Combs, got in the first one, Blaq says, and ``drove away with his people.

There were maybe half a dozen bodyguards with him.

``Biggie, Little Caesar (a rapper protege of Wallace's) and another bodyguard got

into the second car.'' After Combs drove off, Wallace got out of his vehicle and

started blaring his new album on a cassette player and asked Blaq to join him in

smoking some marijuana and listening to the music, Blaq says. Blaq declined but

said that he would try to catch up with Wallace later at his hotel.

He says the three drove out of the Petersen Automotive Museum lot on Wilshire

Boulevard, made a right turn and were about to head north toward the

Hollywood Hills.

Blaq says a friend who witnessed the shooting said that while Wallace's vehicle

was stuck at a light, a car drove up on the passenger side and opened fire.

Wallace was in the front passenger seat. ``They riddled the passenger side with

bullets,'' Blaq says. Friends took Wallace to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but

``by the time he arrived, he was already dead,'' Blaq says.

The 300-pound Wallace became an overnight star when his first album, Ready to

Die, sold more than 1 million copies. His second album is due March 25. If the

title stands, it will be a chilling legacy: Life After Death . . . Til Death Do Us

Part.

Russell Simmons, co-producer of the recent Shakur film Gridock'd and a pioneer

in rap music with his Def Jam Records, spent time with Wallace at the party and

says the rapper was upbeat. He laments that the Biggie Smalls he will remember

is not the one that the news accounts are portraying. ``Every time I turned on the

TV, there was a shot of him in handcuffs. He was not shown with his family or

creating his art.''

Although Wallace's death was shocking, to say it was unexpected isn't accurate.

He had been one of the instigators of the rapper feud.

The beef between the rival coasts centered largely on who created the hard-core

style of rap music known as gangsta rap, a genre whose graphic language and

vivid descriptions of violence have made it one of the best-selling vehicles in

recorded music. Such West Coast artists as Shakur, Dr. Dre (Andre Young), and

Snoop Doggy Dogg (Calvin Broadus) and East Coast counterparts B.I.G.,

Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep and others have sold millions of albums.

The gangsta persona extended to record executives as well. Death Row Records,

home to Snoop and Shakur, was led by 31-year-old, 300-pound Marion ``Suge''

Knight, who built an intimidating reputation among colleagues based on his

alleged ties to the Bloods street gang and a barely controlled violence.

Knight, who was in the car with Shakur when he was shot, has been accused of

using baseball bats to settle business disputes. He's serving a nine-year prison

term for violating probation on prior assault charges.

Combs, head of New York-based Bad Boy Entertainment, was the promoter of a

Harlem concert where seven people were crushed to death. He left Uptown

Records, a label he had largely built with his street-smart instincts, because his

style clashed with that of more conservative record executives.

This summer, the war of words between Death Row and Bad Boy reached a

boiling point when Shakur claimed on an album that he had sexual relations with

Evans, who was then pregnant with Wallace's child. After Shakur was shot,

industry observers and fans wondered whether an all-out war was imminent.

But record executives and radio stations called for calm, and many thought that

the gangsta style was on the way out in favor of a new, positive attitude. A truce

meeting in New York called by the Nation of Islam last September was attended

by many rappers, but not Wallace, Combs or Knight.

At the time, Combs told USA TODAY he had no beefs with Knight or Death

Row. ``I'm happy to be young and black and have a constant job. I appreciate

that too much to let myself get pulled into the negativity. The only thing I've

heard is the records that you've heard. I've never been approached on any other

level besides that. So it was more hype than anything.''

Some don't agree. ``The thing with the East Coast and West Coast wasn't really

buried, if you talked to the people who knew what was happening under the

surface,'' says Dennis Hunt, who writes about rap for Vibe.

David Wollack, who has covered the hip-hop scene for Daily Variety and BAM

magazine, admits, ``I'm really freaked. We have this complete state of violence,

and it's totally Tupac-related.'' Wollack predicts, ``there will be some more of

this.''

East Coast rapper Q-Tip, of A Tribe Called Quest, told Los Angeles' KPWR

radio Sunday, ``We need to wake up, man. Yo, this has got to stop . . .

entertainers killing each other.''

Hunt says Wallace's death will make gangsta rap even more appealing. ``People

might think this is one more nail in the coffin, but what it does for the kids

involved in gangsta rap is it makes it even more attractive. It's the gangsta

lifestyle.''

Jones plans to devote ``the rest of my life'' to curbing the self-destructive

elements of hip-hop. It's not the fault of music, he stresses, but rather the

glamorization of gang life, ``which has become the romance of the '90s.''

``I hope people do not use this to try to promote a civil war between the East

Coast and the West Coast,'' says Phyllis Pollack, who heads Def Press, a Los

Angeles publicity firm specializing in gangsta rap. But, she notes, ``if what

happened to Tupac didn't change things, nothing will.''

Contributing: Edna Gundersen and Jonathan T. Lovitt

PHOTO, Color,Mark Lennihan,AP; PHOTO, Color,Mike Segar,Reuters;

PHOTO, Color,Stephen Trupp,Celebrity Photo; PHOTO, Color,Venus

Bernardo-Prudhomme,AP