Song of the day for March 9, 2024
2 min read
Hypnotize by The Notorious B.I.G. is today’s featured song.
In 1997, 24-year-old rapper Notorious B.I.G. was shot and fatally wounded as he was traveling back to his hotel after leaving a Los Angeles awards party. Born Christopher Wallace, the artist – also known as Biggie Smalls – was a gangster rap icon and regarded by many as one of hip-hop’s finest MCs. He topped the Billboard Hot 100 twice in 1997 with the singles “Hypnotise” and “Mo Money Mo Problems” and was commemorated by his wife, R&B singer Faith Evans, with the transatlantic chart-topper “I’ll Be Missing You,” based on a sample of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.”
During 1996, while recording his second album, Wallace became ensnarled in the escalating East Coast–West Coast hip hop feud. Following Tupac Shakur’s murder in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996, speculations of involvement in Shakur’s murder by criminal elements orbiting the Bad Boy circle circulated because of Shakur’s public feud with Wallace. On March 9, 1997, six months after Shakur’s murder, Wallace was murdered by an unidentified assailant in a drive-by shooting while visiting Los Angeles.
Wallace’s second album Life After Death, a double album, was released two weeks later. It reached number one on the Billboard 200, spawned two singles that peaked on the Billboard Hot 100: “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems” (featuring Puff Daddy and Mase), and eventually achieved a diamond certification in the United States.
With two more posthumous albums released, Wallace has certified sales of over 28 million copies in the United States, including 21 million albums.
In 2020, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Joining the likes of Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails and T. Rex
He has received many accolades over the years including Rolling Stone calling him the “greatest rapper that ever lived”, and Billboard named him the greatest rapper of all time in 2016. The Source magazine named him the greatest rapper of all time in its 150th issue.
