The time I sort of met Notorious B.I.G.
On my 16th birthday I got to visit NYC. I tagged along on a road trip with my mom who was taking one of her students to interview for a summer internship with Michael Moore. This was in 1996 and at the time Michael Moore wasn't as big a deal as he is today. He had a cult following but wasn't a national celebrity yet. Anyways, I got to go to his office and although he wasn't there I looked through his CD's and thought it was cool that he listened to Rage Against the Machine. Looking back though, this was a pretty obvious listening choice for him.
We stayed at my mom's cousin George's house. George is a very straight laced, corporate business man with little interest in popular culture or anything artsy for that matter. Needless to say he wasn't very impressed that his attached neighbour in his New Jersey gated community was a loud, partying, gangsta rapper named Notorious BIG. Biggie like Michael Moore was also not a huge household name yet because A) he had only been around a few years B) rap hadn't yet exploded into the monster that it is today and C) he wasn't famous for being dead yet. So, I didn't really know him because of all of these reasons and the fact that I had absolutely no interest in rap at all.
Even though George hated Biggie (mostly because of the noise that he made) he managed to keep newspaper clippings of all the violent crimes Biggie had been involved in. I guess George did in some way think it was mildly amusing or "cool" that was living next door to a famous rapper.
So, while I was visiting two things happened involving Biggie that I like to tell people (especially teenagers who love Biggie Smalls, which makes me look cool.) The first thing is that the night I stayed at George's, Biggie not surprisingly had a loud party. When the party was in full force my mom yelled at Little Kim and Faith Evens telling them to shut up when they were talking loudly on a balcony outside my mom's room when she was trying to sleep.
The second thing is that the next day when I was leaving the house to go to NYC I ran into Biggie and his even larger bodyguards/entourage and he said to me "Party loud enough for ya'll?" to which I responded "No."
That was my meeting with Biggie Smalls.
A few months later Biggie got killed and everyone knew who he was. I told my friends at that point that I had a chance meeting with him and everyone actually believed me because they new I was clueless when it came to rap.
