Justice for Biggie?

The Notorious B.I.G., skilled rapper and East Coast foil to hip-hop demigod Tupac Shakur, finally is getting his posthumous day in court this week as his family pursues a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. The case makes for a cold retrospective into earlier years of gangsta rap, when feuds between rival gangs and East- and West Coast record labels often seemed to turn violent. These days seem a little better: When G-Unit thugs 50 Cent and The Game settled their differences a few months ago, they cited Biggie Smalls' death as the reason life was too short for beef; in his song "Like Toy Soldiers," Eminem is believed to have told Ja Rule, the diminutive New York MC, that their feud wasn't worth anyone's life.

So the B.I.G. trial is a leftover from hip-hop's less enlightened era, in which, Biggie's family contends, an off-duty LAPD officer helped conspire with the rapper's enemies to gun him down as he rode in an SUV in Los Angeles. The murder didn't happen so long ago, however, that the survivors aren't feeling skittish about sharing what they know. Meaning that we haven't progressed far enough from the violence of the 90's.

Posted by Philip Ewing at June 22, 2005 11:04 AM

Category: