Biggie's former Brooklyn abode has no small asking price.
The Brooklyn apartment where Christopher Wallace aka the Notorious B.I.G. / Biggie Smalls used to live is now on the market for $1.7 million, according to the New York Post.
The “Mo Money, Mo Problems” rapper bought the apartment in the Fort Greene section of the borough in 1994. He resided there with his wife, Faith Evans, and her daughter, Chyna Tahjere Griffin, according to the Post. During his time living in the apartment, he released his debut album, “Ready to Die."
The apartment is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex with 12-foot-high ceilings, a fireplace and an arched window in the living room, according to Compass, who has listed the unit.
The apartment was purchased in 2011 and its current owner and seller gave it a gut renovation before moving in, the Post reported.
The “Hypnotize” rapper grew up in the borough and his childhood apartment now rents for more than $4,000 a month, the Post reported.
The only child of Jamaican immigrants, the Notorious B.I.G. was born in 1972 in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. By the time he was 12, Wallace started dealing drugs and eventually dropped out of high school.
Legendary DJ Mister Cee, who discovered Wallace and worked with him, told Inside Edition Digital earlier this year that his friend’s story serves as a template to aspire to greatness no matter one's circumstances.
“I think that's what makes his story stand out more than anybody else's is that verbally, shows you in his music that he turned a negative into a positive,” said Mister Cee.
In 1991, Wallace's life changed as he started rapping for the very first time and recorded a demo tape that gained traction among the New York underground hip-hop scene. Wallace caught the attention of Mister Cee, who was contacted by the rapper’s former DJ and manager 50 Grand, who told him he had to listen to a demo tape.
Mister Cee had just returned home from tour with another legendary New York rapper, Big Daddy Kane, when 50 Grand showed up at his house begging him to listen to the demo.
Mister Cee helped promote his music at clubs, on the radio and eventually passed it to the editors of hip-hop’s bible – The Source magazine.
“When I got to meet Christopher Wallace, before he became successful, he was a very shy guy, very shy. He always talked with his head down,” Mister Cee recalled. “The more he became more successful after the demo was presented in the Source magazine, the more he got confidence in himself, and that head got lifted up...He was also a very, very funny person, always making jokes, always laughing. Just very jovial.”
Wallace was murdered in a drive-by shooting on a Los Angeles street during the early hours of March 9, 1997. The rapper was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. His case remains unsolved to this day.
His funeral in Brooklyn, held on March 18, saw the main streets of Bed-Stuy closed for the procession, which was attended by Queen Latifah, Flava Flav, Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim, Run DMC, Busta Rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa and hip-hop founding father DJ Kool Herc.
“Going to the funeral and then seeing him laying in the casket in a weird way, it got me to get some closure,” Mister Cee explained. “It got me to slowly, but surely start to move on, because that's what he would want me to do. He would want me to move on, he would want me to continue to do whatever I was doing in my career, but also to do what I'd need to do to keep his name alive.”
