Christopher Wallace
The autopsy report of Christopher Wallace — the Notorious B.I.G., the Brooklyn rap icon, 1972–1997.
Early Life
Christopher George Latore Wallace was born May 21, 1972, at St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Voletta Wallace, a Jamaican immigrant who worked as a preschool teacher. His father left the family when Christopher was two years old. Raised in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, he grew into a big kid with a big presence — and by his teens he was known on the block as “Biggie Smalls,” after Calvin Lockhart's gangster character in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again.
The neighborhood dealt him a hard hand. As a teenager Wallace drifted into drug dealing on the streets of Brooklyn, and he later described that life as his education. But he also carried a gift for words — a storyteller's ear and a rapper's command of rhythm. A demo tape of his rhymes began circulating through New York's hip-hop underground, and in 1992 The Source magazine singled him out in its influential “Unsigned Hype” column as an artist to watch.
The column caught the ear of Sean “Puffy” Combs, then a rising A&R man at Uptown Records. Combs signed Wallace to Uptown, and when Combs was fired in 1993 and founded his own label, Bad Boy Records, Wallace — now recording as the Notorious B.I.G. — came with him.
The Rise
Ready to Die, released September 13, 1994, announced Biggie as a generational talent. The album debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum within months, carried by the autobiographical “Juicy,” the swaggering “Big Poppa,” and the chart-topping “One More Chance/Stay with Me,” which reached No. 2 on the Hot 100. His cinematic storytelling, effortless flow, and commanding voice made the album an instant classic and crowned him the king of the East Coast.
Wallace built an empire around himself. In 1995 his protégés, the Junior M.A.F.I.A., released the gold album Conspiracy, spinning off the hit “Player's Anthem.” His marriage to rising R&B singer Faith Evans in 1994 made them hip-hop's royal couple, and on October 29, 1996, their son Christopher Jordan Wallace was born. (Wallace also had a daughter, T'yanna, from an earlier relationship.)
His success was shadowed by the deepening East Coast–West Coast rivalry in hip-hop, which pitted Bad Boy Records against Los Angeles-based Death Row Records and its co-founder, Marion “Suge” Knight. The feud escalated after the September 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, the West Coast star, in Las Vegas — a killing that remains unsolved.
Wallace's second album, Life After Death, was already finished when the end came. Released posthumously on March 25, 1997 — sixteen days after his death — the double album debuted at No. 1, sold 690,000 copies in its first week, and went on to be certified diamond. Its singles “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems” both reached No. 1 on the Hot 100, and the album earned Grammy nominations for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Solo Performance. The 1998 Grammy Awards carried a tribute to Wallace, and Combs and Faith Evans' memorial single “I'll Be Missing You” — built around “Every Breath You Take” — spent eleven weeks at No. 1 and won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.
Posthumous releases followed, including Born Again (1999) and Duets: The Final Chapter (2005), and in 2020 the Notorious B.I.G. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Death
In early 1997 Wallace traveled to Los Angeles to promote Life After Death and shoot the video for “Hypnotize.” On the night of March 8, he attended the 11th Annual Soul Train Music Awards and then an afterparty at the Petersen Automotive Museum, with Combs and his Bad Boy entourage.
Shortly after leaving the party, just after midnight on March 9, 1997, Wallace was riding in the passenger seat of a GMC Suburban when a dark Chevrolet Impala pulled up alongside. An African-American male in a blue suit and bow tie rolled down his window, drew a 9mm blue-steel pistol, and fired at the Suburban. Four bullets struck Wallace. His entourage rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where doctors could not save him. Christopher Wallace was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. He was 24 years old.
According to the autopsy report, Wallace died as a result of a “gunshot wound to the abdomen-chest.” Three of the four bullets were non-fatal shots. His body was cremated, and the ashes were given to family members.
The murder remains unsolved. The Los Angeles Police Department led the original investigation, with lead detective Russell Poole heading the case. In 2002, Randall Sullivan published LAbyrinth, a book built around evidence provided by Poole that laid out a theory tying the Wallace and Shakur murders to Death Row Records and figures connected to the LAPD. In January 2011, the case was reinvigorated when a task force of the LAPD, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, and the FBI reopened the investigation; the FBI released redacted documents revealing the bullets were rare 9mm Gecko ammunition manufactured in Germany. Retired LAPD detective Greg Kading, who worked the case for three years, has publicly advanced his own theory of the killing. Despite these efforts, no one has ever been charged with the murder of Christopher Wallace.