The Notorious B.I.G.: Victim of rivalry, payback or his own making? Rap lovers, hip-hop generation nix police theories

The Notorious B.I.G.: Victim of rivalry, payback or his own making? Rap lovers, hip-hop generation nix police theories

The murder of big man, The Notorious B.I.G., has set off waves of theories that range from East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry to "payback" for the murder of rival Tupac Shakur.

But rap singers on both coasts and hip-hop groupies alike aren't buying any of the present theories. They're saying that Biggie Smalls was the victim of "past bad karma."

Recently, Smalls converted to Christianity, allegedly abandoning his assumed violent past. But culture and rap followers on the Internet agree that Small's "notorious" past was his enemy and not any rivalry from West Coast rappers or friends of Shakur.

Notorious B.I.G. aka Christopher Wallace was the victim late last week of a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn, N.Y. New York and Los Angeles police are treating the murder as a "revenge" killing.

"The conventional wisdom is, you know, it's got to be payback for Tupac," a Los Angeles law enforcement official said. "Biggie had to be crazy to be so unprotected in Los Angeles, six months after Tupac was shot."

New York police are investigating the murder on the theory that Smalls was murdered by the feared Bloods gang to cover their tracks in the slaying of Shakur.

Detectives suspect Tupac was killed by the Los Angeles-based gang because he reportedly had a beef with them.

Under this theory, Smalls' producer, Sean "Puff Daddy" Comba, could be the next target, police say.

They feel the gang may want to get rid of Comba, the head of bad Boy Entertainment in New York, to further confuse investigators.

LAPD's Lt. Ross Moen, who heads the investigation on the West Coast, said other possibilities have not been ruled out.

"We are not overlooking the possibility of a payback or a gang-related type of shooting - that this was a hit, a direct target.

"It could have come out of New York. It could have come out of Los Angeles. It would have come out of Atlanta," where another rapper was recently killed, he said.

But members of the rap community believe, at least, that an alleged East Coast-West Coast rivalry is nothing more than "hype" - a way for both Death Row Records (Shakur's label), and Bad Boy Entertainment to sell more records.

The hip-hop community appears to be buying neither theory. They say that the murder was a "personal" thing that had nothing to do with "Shakur's death" or the alleged record company rivalries. But they are not ruling out the gang-related theory.

Smalls' debut album Ready to Die went platinum, selling selling more than one million copies.

Last year, he was honored as Rap Artist of the Year at the Billboard Awards. His single One More Chance/Stay With Me was named best rap single after debuting at No. 5, typing Michael Jackson's Scream/ Childhood as the highest debuting single ever.

But he also had a long rap sheet with Brooklyn police.

Last summer, Smalls was arrested after police-checking a parking complaint-found marijuana and firearms at his Teaneck, N.J., home.

Just months earlier, he was charged with assault in New York after allegedly using a baseball bat to attack a pair of autograph seekers. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 110 hours of community service.

Last fall, he was charged with drug possession after Brooklyn police caught him smoking marijuana in a parked car.

And in January, Smalls was ordered to pay $25,000 to a man beaten in May 1995, in a dispute over a cancelled performance in Camden, N.J. The civil suit followed his acquittal of robbery charged in the same case.

Moen said the killer knew what he wanted. And added that police now have 200 witnesses they are questioning.

The killer was allegedly driving a large dark sedan. He reportedly came up to Smalls' parked car in the right lane, stopped next to it and shot five times through the door and closed tinted window with a 9 mm. handgun.

Smalls, hit in the chest and abdomen, died almost instantly, according to the coroner's report. No one else was injured. He had just left a party held by Vibe magazine.

The rapper was sitting in the passenger seat of a dark green GMC Suburban that had just rolled out of the party's parking lot and had stopped at a red light.

In front, was a second identical Suburban filled with members of Smalls' entourage. Behind was a Chevy Blazer packed with his bodyguards.

Many of Shakur's followers blamed Smalls for Shakur's death. Shakur allegedly accused Smalls of involvement in a 1994 robbery where Tupac was shot several times and lost $40,000 in jewelry.

And Smalls was conspicuously absent from a "rap summit" held in Harlem last fall following Shakur's death.

Smalls, 24, was born in Brooklyn's toughest neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he was once a crack dealer.

Millions of his followers who are mourning his death, are confident rivalry or "payback" was not the cause of his death.

"Eventually, the mystery will unfold," Moen said. "We will catch our man."