As part of Idolator's continuing effort to geekily analyze every music chart known to man, we present a new edition of Project X, in which Michaelangelo Matos breaks down top-ten lists from every genre imaginable. After the jump, he sits through VH1's latest TV-based listicle, 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs, and finds a few poignant moments among the MC Hammer jokes:
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"He was just hanging out at the barber shop, used to party over there up on St. James Place. He used to come down to the store and say, 'Birdell, I want you to help me get beats, tracks, 'cause I know you know them old blues and the good music.' I said: 'Aw, Biggie, I don't have time for that. I'll tell you what I'll do. Get you a record player and I'll let you go downstairs in the basement.' So he and his partner would come every day three or four months straight, every day but Saturdays, and he would say, 'I'm going to be big one day, Birdell.' I said, 'Aw, you ain't going to be nothing.' " — Brooklyn record-store owner Joe Long on the crate-digging ways of former customer Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace. [NYT]
The Los Angeles Times has retracted its controversial March 17 story "An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War," which claimed that Sean "Diddy" Combs was aware that Shakur would be attacked in late November 1994, and that the attack was orchestrated by associates of the Bad Boy CEO. The paper acknowledged that it had been hoaxed by its "confidential sources" immediately following a March 27 debunking of the story on The Smoking Gun, but only today did it announce a full retraction of the original article, written by longtime Diddy conspiracy theorist Chuck Phillips.
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Ray J, the 27-year-old brother of Brandy celebrating his first top ten hit, "Sexy Can I (feat. Yung Berg)," wants you to know that despite the attention he's received for knocking boots with Whitney Houston and Kim Kardashian, he (somehow) still loves women. "A lot of people think of me as being an attention whore or a slut. And I'm not really that. I love being in front of the camera and entertaining. But I do respect women. I'm not disrespectful to anybody that I'm cool with. I just want people to know that I'm not a disrespectful pedophile." Earlier in the same interview, J described the love and chronic Biggie and Tupac showed the then-underage singer immediately before their respective murders.
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The latest limited-edition Notorious B.I.G. action figure will be available in April, and apparently the "Juicy"-inspired design features "towel, chain, sunglasses and mic" that are all removable. No word on whether toy Biggie's toy Timbs are also removable, but if so, it looks like you could probably re-gift the ginormous things at your next baby shower. [Woohah! via ProHipHop]
Jamal "Gravy" Woolard, who made headlines in the spring of 2006 when he was shot in the butt outside the Hot 97 building, has been tapped to play the Notorious B.I.G. in Notorious, the Biggie Smalls biopic scheduled to hit theaters in 2009; the movie will also feature Angela Bassett as Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace. According to Nah Right, Gravy has been at the front of the casting line since the Hot 97 incident, so all those open casting calls that even got the New York Times interested may have been nothing more than publicity stunts to drum up excitement about the movie. [MissInfo.TV / Nah Right]
"Newly discovered evidence" and a fresh round of defendants (some of them [very] minor celebrities) have re-juiced the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles in Biggie's 1997 homicide, which initially fingered two members of the LAPD, Rafael Perez and David Mack.
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Someone needs to sit the also-17-years-old Soulja Boy down with this clip (originally from an MTV or VH1 documentary, if my Swiss cheese memory serves?) of the teenaged Biggie Smalls freestyling on a BK street corner, and give him the Ludovico until he promises to step his game up or quit. [Banana Nutrament]
Who murdered Biggie? Apparently it's not the LAPD. According to the LA Times, Waymond Anderson, a resident of the Los Angeles correctional system currently doing a life bid for murder and who had previously claimed two crooked cops helped take down the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997, "said in a recent deposition that he lied about LAPD involvement in the Smalls slaying as part of a 'scam' concocted by two other convicts to squeeze a large monetary settlement out of the city":
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Hey, are you a big fat guy (or a skinny guy willing to bulk up) with a lot of presence? Then you could be the one to play the Notorious B.I.G. in the upcoming (and long awaited) biopic. (It would probably also help if you were African-American, unless Todd Haynes is directing this thing.) On Sunday, aspiring Biggies can send their closeup reel to Fox Searchlight and hope for the best. No word yet on who will play Puffy or Ma$e, but your suggestions are welcome in the comments box.
Just as progress is being made in the Jam Master Jay shooting, there's news today on yet another long-running murder investigation:
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Today's the 10th anniversary of the Notorious B.I.G.'s death, and in his honor, The Rap Up has posted Unbelievable: A Tribute To Biggie Smalls, a Diddy-hosted mixtape put together by Mick Boogie. The mix is a whopping 27 tracks, and it includes guest spots from the likes of Nas, Kanye West, and Jay-Z:
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As New York magazine reports, today's a big day in the ongoing investigation of Notorious B.I.G.'s 1997 murder: His family's estate is pursuing a wrongful-death claim against the L.A.P.D.—they allege that the police bungled their own investigation, hoping to cover up departmental corruption—and lawyers are now set to depose two potential witnesses:
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