Sucking up to the biggies won't get us anywhere.
Alice Walker
I wanna thank Biggie Smalls, Redman, Jadakiss, Tupac and Michael Jackson for being my theme music throughout my career.
Allen Iverson
I'm part of the generation that grew up with great rappers like 2Pac and Biggie and people like Amy Winehouse. We've seen a lot of different artists come and go. Even people who are still here, they seem consumed and blinded by fame. It may not have taken them out physically, but they have been taken out.
Anderson Paak
I decided to see how my voice sounds on different type of records. So I did Eminem and the Biggie, Florence and the Machine, and Muse covers. A couple of them just came from some jam sessions between me and my sister in her bedroom at my father's house in San Diego.
Andra Day
I had a lot of respect for Biggie, and it was just a weird, kinda difficult thing. When I'm doing touchy interviews like that, I just try to be fair to both parties.
Angie Martinez
I had to tell the city that 2Pac passed, and I had to be on the radio early after Biggie passed. Those were awful, emotional.
There is some gangsta music I like, like Biggie Smalls - he reminds me of Slick Rick -doing the same thing, but he did it in a really artistic way.
apl.de.ap
My favorite rappers are a lot of other people's favorite rappers. I love Jay Z, Kanye, 2Pac, Biggie, old Mos Def.
Ari Melber
I grew up part of the MTV generation. I saw Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z on TV and I thought: 'Wow, look at these powerful black people.' I wanted that.
Ashley Walters
Everyone uses grime as a footstool, but imagine Biggie Smalls started doing hip hop, and it started going well, and then he started making RnB: there would be no hip hop!
Big Narstie
My dad is from Queens. I remember visiting as a kid. My grandparents grew up here. All the actors I respected were coming out of here. All the hip-hop I was listening to - Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Wu Tang - was coming out of New York. I'm just into it.
Bryan Greenberg
With Biggie, I thought his flow and his swag was better than Tupac's, but I thought Tupac's passion and ability to relate to the average person was better than Biggie, and I thought Nas was kind of like both, with a lot substance going but a lot of swag.
Damian Lillard
I wanna be in a movie, I wanna have a clothing line, I wanna put myself in a position where, when I'm dead and gone, or I can't rap anymore, that's still moving. Tupac and Biggie, they've been dead 10-plus years and people talk about them everyday. I'm gonna try to speak everything into existence. I know the music is my key to get there.
Dave East
Nobody uses skits at all anymore, so it seems like I use a lot. That's how I grew up on tapes. Biggie tapes, Biggie albums would have skits. The Lox would have skits. Mase would have skits. All the dudes I grew up on in Nineties rap would have skits on their projects, just to make you feel like you were right there with them.
A lot of Friday nights, Guru and I would go kick it with Biggie, since he was just three blocks down from us.
DJ Premier
Jay Z and Biggie and Nas always listened to my direction. They listened and they applied it and I also listened to their opinions and that's why the records came out so good.
I listen to a lot of music, and I listen to some rap, and I do like listening to Biggie Smalls.
Ed Oxenbould
When I first met Big, we were both at a 'Bad Boy' family photo shoot. I was kind of familiar with the name Biggie Smalls, but I really wasn't that much into hip-hop at the time, so I really didn't know that was him. He said he didn't even know I was an artist on 'Bad Boy.'
Faith Evans
People used to say my son looked like a Mexican Biggie. And when he was first born, memories of Biggie... you know, we didn't always have the greatest days. For at least half the length of our marriage we were separated, so everyday was definitely not a good day.
Biggie has been the logo for success, the logo for doing it big - from popping champagne, the ladies, the fashion.
Fat Joe
When you go back and really listen to the legendary rappers, this is timeless music. Guys like Biggie, guys like Pac, timeless music.
I have been a fan of Versace for so long, watching people like Biggie, Puff, Jay-Z.
Jay Z wasn't great when 2pac and Biggie was alive.
There's four biggies. There was Elizabeth I, George III, Victoria, and the current queen, who really dominated four eras.
When Wu-Tang came, Wu-Tang was for that era, right there. When Dre had it in the West Coast, it was for that time. Biggie and them, it was for that time.
If you hear people talking about the Golden Era of rap, they're usually talking about the early Wu Tang Clan era and then Nas and Biggie and so on. But for me, it goes back to the '80s - 1986 to 1989.
I'm a big fan of all styles, even Biggie and Wu-Tang, but I gotta do my thing.
No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.
A lot of people say I tried to emulate Tupac, but when I look back at my career, we're very different artists. I took pages out of Pac's book, of course, and lots of other rappers - Biggie, Nas - of course you take pages out of those books, but you eventually make it your own thing. And I think I did a good job of that.
Obviously, the Champions League and Premier League are the biggies, and obviously, if you could win any, it would be one of those two.
I grew up in a little bubble of Brooklyn in France! In Stains, I was learning to speak English; I was listening to Biggie Smalls and KRS-One, and so I basically lived the life by proxy. At the same time, I had the same problems and issues they were singing about right next to me, so it was easy to identify with it.
Biggie was the King Of New York as a rapper. There's a lot more dangerous guys than Biggie Smalls out there, you know what I'm saying? John Gotti was way closer to King Of New York than him.
Ultimately, the film industry has always pushed out its biggies, and I don't have a problem with that. I just wish that we'd spend more time nurturing the smaller ones.
I guess this year I'm going to find out if I'm good enough or not. If I'm not, I don't care. I'll do something else, it's not a biggie.
Biggie has definitely stood the test of time. He's the reason Jay-Z and loads of other rappers are who they are. His flow and wordplay is brilliant - the stories he would tell are just nuts.
I fell in love with hip-hop a little bit late; I grew up on Another Bad Creation and Kris Kross. But my mom got me a TV in my room, and I remember seeing Biggie's 'Give Me One More Chance,' and I was like, 'Oh, this is how a house party looks!' I really, really fell in love with it when Tupac created 'Dear Mama.'
Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.
Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, Big L, Tupac. That was, like, my top five, generally.
I'm better than Tupac and Biggie. I say that so now you know where my head at.
For me, I put Mac Dre right up there with Biggie and 'Pac as legends who have since passed on.
My dad did not play Biggie or Tupac, so I had never heard it.
Biggie and Big Pun were the best storytellers of the '90s. I would get wrapped up in the narrative of what they were talking about.
At a earlier age, I was kind of into a pretty large scope or range of music from Hieroglyphics and the Hobo Junction guys and all that to like a lot of stuff that was in New York like Diamond D, Nas, Brand Nubian, of course Biggie, OC, Organized Confusion, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Digable Planets, who I just saw recently, and they killed it.
Most people don't know that the biggest regret that I have - and it's a biggie - is not fighting harder for policy and very practical measures to support the development of the green jobs industry.
For those from my era, my age, that 2Pac vs. Biggie war will go on forever about who is the greatest. But I was more of a Biggie dude.
There will never be another Biggie ever again.
I listen to a lot of Biggie, he's so lyrical.
Man, me and Biggie were the biggest artists in New York. When he passed, I was so messed up. My attitude was messed up about him dying. There was an East-West thing back then, and I was in war mode.
If you think about 2Pac, Biggie, and Nas, all of those guys were teenagers or in their early 20s when they got started. Everybody acts like young people have to be silly and lack perspective. Those guys had incredible perspective, and everything that they said was before 25 years old.
Let's say honorary favorite New Yorker is John Lennon, and favorite real New Yorker is Biggie, because he's the best.
