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  • Biggie Envy and the Gangsta Sublime
  • Michael S. Collins (bio)

"[Violence] is as American as cherry pie."

—H. Rap Brown

"Damn—niggas want to stick me for my paper!"

—Biggie Smalls

"In other words, there is no real other than that which has been represented through imagery."

—Todd Boyd

1. Introduction

The beautiful murder, the murder lifted into the mind by "winged words," is in many ways the heartbeat of American culture—indeed, of all western culture. In the Iliad, for instance, Achilles kills Priam's son Lykaon after delivering a memorable speech on the nature of mortality to the pleading prince. Centuries later, lynchings of African Americans were enabled by disquisitions on the dangers they posed to white power and white honor, whose greatest symbol was the white woman. Eloquent Cold War speeches helped justify CIA rubouts and Western sponsorship of greedy and sometimes homicidal non-Western dictators (including Saddam Hussein). The movie Patton, based on the life of the American general, brings to the screen the eloquence that fills the hearts of soldiers as they march into battle. In the famous opening scene, Patton advises his men not to die for their country but to "make the other poor son of a bitch die for his country."

Hardcore rappers rhyming about blowing away their foes with 9-millimeter pistols are in a sense part of a grand and troubling tradition. A memorable example was the late Christopher Wallace when he put on the persona of The Notorious B.I.G. (aka Biggie Smalls, aka Big Poppa). Like other so-called gangsta rappers, Wallace seemed to follow the advice of the grandfather in Invisible Man, to "agree [the white power structure] to death and destruction." Rapping such lines as "I been robbing motherfuckers since the slave ships," Wallace let himself be swallowed up on disc in a persona his sharp ironies cut open—a persona perfected for black males of his approximate class and generation in New York City at the beginning of the 1990s. 1 [End Page 911]

Recall that, in the wake of the giant headlines and public outcry that followed the 1989 rape and near-fatal beating of the Caucasian woman who became known as "the Central Park jogger," five African American and Hispanic teenagers were convicted of the crime after four confessed under pressure. Yet the convictions were vacated in 2002 after the real rapist gave a confession that was supported by DNA evidence. The original convictions and blanket media coverage nevertheless provided invaluable reinforcement for the late twentieth-century stereotype of "young black males" as incarnations of violence. 2 In a sort of gesture some have compared to minstrelsy, Biggie pulled the stereotype on like a mask. "My forte causes Caucasians to say, 'he sounds demented. . . .' I bite my tongue for no one," he observes on one recording. 3 On the contrary, Wallace liked to push the envelope of gangsta rap themes, and of the "bad nigger" persona his voice projected.

On the incendiary 1995 rap "Who Shot Ya," for instance, Biggie revels in the ruthless omnipotence both of his persona and of his own M.C. skills:

Who shot ya?— Separate the weak from the obsolete. Hard to creep them Brooklyn streets.

…. I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet Thundering, shaking the concrete The shit stop when I foil the plot

…. Slaughter, electrical tape around your daughter Old school new school need to learn though I burn baby burn like Disco Inferno Burn slow like blunts with yayo 4 Peel more skins than Idaho potato. Niggaz know, the lyrical molesting is taking place Fucking with B.I.G. it ain't safe.

…… Big Poppa smash fools, bash fools Niggas mad because I know Cash Rules Everything Around Me. . . .

….. And I'm Crooklyn's finest: You rewind this, Bad Boy's behind this.

The phrases "lyrical molesting" and "rewind this" show Biggie's awareness that the true source of his power is his ability to snap a couplet shut like a purse full of money rather than his ability to fire a Glock 9-millimeter pistol. Indeed, what rappers call "flow," the ability to drive the river...

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