Rappers don’t always get what they want or would have wanted, just like the rest of us. According to DNA info, there was a petition circulating to co-name the corner of St. James Place and Fulton Street in Brooklyn, ‘Christopher Walace Way’, after the late rapper Biggie Smalls aka Notorious B.I.G. However, community board members rejected the proposition based on the fact that he was ‘a criminal, a misogynist,… and ‘too fat’ to received such an honor!!
Committee members said they looked at his history and didn’t like what they found.
‘He started selling drugs at 12, he was a school dropout at 17, he was arrested for drugs and weapons charge, he was arrested for parole violations, he was arrested in North Carolina for crack cocaine, in 1996 he was again arrested for assault, he had a violent death and physically the man is not exactly a role model for youth. I don’t see how this guy was a role model and frankly it offends me’, declared Lucy Koteen.
LeRoy McCarthy, who started the movement, responded that ‘board members should not hold Wallace’s physical appearance nor how he died against him’, adding ‘There are many artists that share stories in a vernacular that their audiences understand, Biggie used the language from the streets he grew up in to convey what he wanted to say,’ and that’s very true, but how many people are going to understand this? McCarthy managed to get letters of support from local churches and even a mosque, as well as from local businesses and people all over the world who signed the petition,… but will this be enough?
I don’t know who these committee people are but if they need to do a research to discover Biggie died of a violent death, my guess is that they are living in a totally different planet than rap fans, and there is no way this woman is gonna change her mind. B.I.G. was a hip hop legend, and there is already a Tupac Lane in Las Vegas so what’s the problem?
But just have a look at all these people who have street names, they are certainly all role models, right? In Hollywood, we have a L. Ron Hubbard street, and you can’t go lower in the human species than this in my opinion. Or may be yes, Donald Trump sued the hell of the city Rancho Palos Verdes here in California (he owns a golf course there) to have a street named after his big fat head! Thanks to the fighting people of the neighborhood it never happened and Trump sold his estate. However, in this strange world, I still think that Trump has more chances to get a street than Biggie, but after all who cares about street names?