Today (March 9) marks the anniversary of the Notorious B.I.G.'s death and fans worldwide have taken to social media to pay tribute to the fallen Rap icon. It was on this day in 1997 in the wee hours of the morning following a Vibe afterparty for the Soul Train Awards that 24-year-old Biggie, real name Christopher Wallace, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. The perpetrators behind the crime have not yet been named or apprehended, but Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace, shared with Entertainment Weekly that she still holds out hope that one day there will be justice for her son.
"As long as I have life there's hope," said Ms. Wallace as she promoted the new Netflix documentary Biggie: I Have a Story to Tell. "I'll never give up. And I hope when I'm not in this world anymore, my friends and family will carry on the fight. There is always hope." Elsewhere she added, "After his passing, I heard a lot of positive and negative things that were being said about him. As a mother, I only wanted to hear positive things because I'm biased. I decided then I wanted to know more about his music. I read something in a magazine about him where the writer said something like, 'what do people expect when you give a bum from the ghetto a million dollars?' I was very hurt by that."
"I never raised my son to be a bum or a drug dealer," she added. "So, I listened to his music and I asked a lot of questions. I cried like a baby while listening because what I heard was an intelligent human being." Damion "D-Roc" Butler, Biggie's good friend, and Wayne Barrow, executor of the rapper's estate, reportedly partnered to release the documentary and explained why they believe the project is important.
"This might be the last March 9 we celebrate moving forward, focusing instead on May 21, his birthday," said Barrow. "We're going to forget March 9, but not in our hearts. By celebrating his birthday, we can focus on his life." Butler was with Biggie in the vehicle when the rapper was shot. "I feel cheated. I feel like we went through all of that for nothing," said Butler.
"I don't feel like this so much anymore but I did for a long time," he continued. "Now I can see that it wasn't for nothing, he sacrificed a lot. That's why we're here today almost twenty-five years later because he's still relevant. He's still the hardest working rapper in the game today."
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