News of March 9, 1997
The Notorious B.I.G. Shot Dead in Los Angeles, Six Months After Tupac
Another rapper, another drive-by shooting: Christopher Wallace died on March 9, 1997. The press immediately drew comparisons to Las Vegas.
Around 0:30 a.m. on March 9, 1997, The Notorious B.I.G. left a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The fire department had shut down the overcrowded party, and hundreds of guests poured onto the street. A car pulled up to the passenger side of his GMC Suburban, and shots were fired from it. Christopher Wallace, 24 years old, died a short time later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Singer Faith Evans, from whom he was separated, and his mother identified him.
The Las Vegas Pattern
The Las Vegas Sun wrote the following day that the murder was similar to Tupac’s: both were struck by gunfire from another car in the passenger seat of a vehicle after a major event. The Los Angeles Times spoke of the second brazen attack on a star of gangsta rap within six months.
Stickers with the release date of his next album, Life After Death, on March 25 were affixed to the car. Whether there was a connection to Tupac’s death occupied police and the public in the following weeks; in their own words, investigators in Las Vegas found no evidence of one. The feud between the two is recounted in East against West.