The deaths of Biggie Small and Tupac Shakur were almost the end of the rap music industry according to the rapper Nas, who remembers how things used to be in the hip hop world.
In a related report by The Inquisitr , Biggie Smalls’ wife Faith Evans says the unsolved murder case is “not closed” and believes Christopher Wallace is not being given justice. Worse, an unnamed source claims the LAPD is covering up identity of murderer of Notorious B.I.G. because the department would be harmed by the revelation. There were even some revelations about Tupac’s death this year, although his last words were not exactly inspiring. The last interview ever made with Shakur was released earlier this year, and the interviewer said she hid it from the world because she “was literally afraid someone would die” if Tupac’s words went public.
Back in the 1990s, the hip hop world was caught up in the east coast versus west coast wars. Things have changed a lot over the years since back then, when rappers went to war there was a real danger of blood being drawn, while today it’s all about the benjamins. When Jay Z and Nas were feuding, some feared a similar outcome as Smalls and Shakur, but Nas thought the music world had already changed by that point:
“Today’s music industry it’s really about money now and back then during that period, when you talk about me battling with Jay, it was about something else. It was not just about being the top guy in rap it felt like we were leaders of nations. Not that we were egotistical as, ‘I’m the leader,’ no, no, no, not in that sense. I mean what you felt surrounding us was… there was an importance in what we were doing more than just success. It was more than just, ‘Oh my record’s going to sell,’ or, ‘Yeah we need the records to sell to make money.’ That was something we thought about, but put that aside. When Pac made Dear Mama [in 1995], and these records and then he had to switch up to get in war mode, these were chess moves. This was real… today is a whole other world.”
Still, Nas does believe the impact of Biggie Small and Tupc Shakur is still being felt today. But at one point the rapper feared his own art form might come to an end:
“Those two things hit me real hard, ’cause I knew both of them. I knew Biggie more, but what they meant to the art form can never be redone, can never be replaced and when those two guys passed away I thought it was the end of rap.”