"There's gonna be some slow singing, and flower bringing, if my burglar alarm starts ringing..." The Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls) brought wit and panache to gangsta rap. He'd been a small-time drug dealer on the streets of Brooklyn, and told interviewers that gangsta rap was all about fantasy — he didn't take threats on his life from West Coast rivals seriously, because in the real world anyone wanting to kill you wouldn't broadcast that fact. And yet, in November of 1996, the slow singing and flower bringing was all for Biggie himself, gunned down in L.A. in the wake of the murder of Tupac Shakur. Biggie may not have taken the fantasy seriously, but someone else did. And he paid the price.

VENUS BERNARDO-PRUDHOMME/AP

Copyright © Time Inc. All Rights Reserved. PRIVACY POLICY