On the Los Angeles set of Poetic Justice in 1993, as Biggie later remembered it, one song kept playing: Party and Bullshit, his own first single. Tupac played it over and over. Christopher George Latore Wallace, known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, became first Tupac’s protégé and friend, then his opponent in the most famous feud in rap history. Both were shot dead within six months of each other.
The course of the feud is told on East vs. West. This page is about Biggie himself and his unsolved killing.
A demo tape opens the door to Bad Boy
Wallace was born in New York on May 21, 1972, and grew up in Brooklyn with his mother, Voletta, an immigrant from Jamaica. Through DJ Mister Cee his demo tape reached The Source. In March 1992 the magazine featured him in its “Unsigned Hype” column, which showcased talent without a record deal. Sean “Puffy” Combs then brought him to Uptown Records.
When Uptown fired Combs in 1993, Wallace followed him to his new label, Bad Boy. His debut Ready to Die came out in 1994 and had passed six million units by 2018, according to the RIAA, counting album sales plus streams converted into album equivalents. In August 1994 he married the singer Faith Evans.
Friends who clicked at once (1993 to 1994)
By Biggie’s own account, that film shoot was where the two met. “We just clicked off the top,” Biggie said of that time in 1996. At the 1993 Budweiser Superfest at Madison Square Garden, they freestyled back to back during Big Daddy Kane’s set.
According to author Ben Westhoff, Biggie even asked Tupac to manage him. Tupac said no and told him to stay with Combs: “Stay with Puff … He will make you a star.”
After the Quad came suspicion
On the night of November 30, 1994, Tupac was robbed and shot in the lobby of Quad Studios while Biggie was recording in the same building (see Shooting 1994). Afterwards Tupac suspected the Bad Boy camp. Biggie always denied it. He could not believe Tupac thought him capable of such a thing, he told Vibe in September 1996. He still considered him a friend.
Who Shot Ya? came out in early 1995, and Tupac heard it as a taunt about the robbery. According to Biggie, he had written it long before, as the intro to a Mary J. Blige song with Keith Murray, but Combs found it too hard. No evidence that Biggie or Combs knew about the attack in advance has ever been produced.
A drawn gun after the Soul Train Awards
The two came face to face for the first time since the Quad in March 1996, after the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles. Biggie told Vibe that Tupac pulled up with his crew and Suge Knight. His friend Little Caesar of Junior M.A.F.I.A. shouted back, and then someone pulled a gun. He rejected reports that Tupac himself had pointed a pistol at him: “Nah, Pac didn’t pull steel on me.”
Decades later another detail emerged. In 2023 Reggie Wright Jr., then Death Row’s head of security, testified before the grand jury in the Davis case, the panel of citizens that decides whether charges are brought. He said Biggie’s security that night included members of the Southside Compton Crips, among them Duane Davis. No shots were fired.
Biggie did not fire back
In June 1996 came Hit ‘Em Up. Biggie did not answer with a diss of his own. How would he look firing back, he asked in Vibe. He did not believe Tupac’s claim about Faith Evans. A man who had really slept with a woman would not expose her like that. Evans has always denied an affair.
Tears on the phone
Biggie heard of Tupac’s death on September 13, 1996, in a New York studio. Faith Evans later recalled that he called her that night in tears: “Something ain’t right, Faye.” He did not want to go to the memorial. Soon afterwards he broke his leg in a car accident.
In March 1997 he traveled to Los Angeles to promote his second album. Four days before his death he addressed the claim that he had something to do with the 1994 robbery on San Francisco’s KYLD: “It’s false. Why would I do that?” He said he wanted to end the East-West feud.
A red light on Wilshire Boulevard
Early on March 9, 1997, Biggie left a Soul Train Music Awards after-party at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard. He was in the front passenger seat of a Chevrolet Suburban. At a red light, a dark Chevrolet Impala pulled up alongside and the gunman opened fire. He was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center shortly after 1 a.m. He was 24.
Two weeks later Life After Death was released; it has passed eleven million units, according to the RIAA. No one has ever been charged. More than 1,000 guests had been at the party, yet police found few witnesses.
Three theories, none proven
In 2002 the Los Angeles Times claimed that Biggie had offered the Crips money to kill Tupac. His family rejected the claim, and it was never proven (see The L.A. Times Scandal).
That same year the Wallace family sued the City of Los Angeles. Their allegation: police officers, including one with ties to Death Row, were involved in the killing, and the department covered it up. The city denied this. The 2005 trial collapsed because police had withheld records; the city had to pay 1.1 million dollars in sanctions. In April 2010 the suit was dismissed by agreement without a ruling and can be refiled. The allegation against the officers was never proven.
In his 2011 book Murder Rap, former LAPD investigator Greg Kading offered another theory. Relying on a female informant, he named Wardell “Poochie” Fouse as the shooter, paid by Suge Knight. Fouse belonged to the Bloods, the Crips’ rivals. He was shot dead in 2003, and Knight has never been charged in the Wallace case. Contemporary reports include no response from Knight. The theory is unproven.
Biggie’s case led to Las Vegas
It was the investigation into Biggie’s death that moved the Tupac case forward. A joint LAPD-federal task force set up in 2006 zeroed in on Duane “Keffe D” Davis in 2008, partly because he drove an Impala. Davis said he had been at the Petersen party but denied any role in Biggie’s death. “We did the other one,” he said, according to former detective Daryn Dupree. He meant Tupac.
On August 31, 2026, a Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. Sentencing is set for October 13, 2026. Davis denies the killing and plans to appeal; the verdict is not final. More on The Trial of Duane Davis. Biggie’s own case remains unsolved.
Two voices on one record
His mother, Voletta Wallace, looked after his legacy until her death in February 2025. In 2020 Biggie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In April 1997, a month after his death, the single Stop the Gunfight entered the charts (report). On it Tupac and Biggie rapped on the same record one more time, each with his own verses, on a song against violence.