Here are the nine rhymes that prove Biggie was a hip-hop genius. 'He would construct those intricately rhyming narratives inside his formidable brain, then step to the microphone and record them 'off the dome.'' 'Unlike most other rappers, he never carried lyric notebooks into the studio,' writes hip-hop journalist Cheo Hodari Coker, in Unbelievable: The Life, Death and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G. Instead, he riffed off the beat and came up with rhymes on the spot. He wrote down thoughts in a notebook, but he didn't bring it into the studio. Those freestyle roots would carry over into how he made rhymes in the studio. He freestyled on the avenue as a hobby until he recorded his first demo in 1991.

In September 1994, Biggie released the first and only album during his lifetime, Ready to Die, on Combs' then-emerging Bad Boy label. But before long, his mixtape caught the attention of a young A&R man at Uptown Records: Sean Combs. By 15 he was selling crack, and by 17 he had dropped out of high school. Wallace grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, the only child of a first-generation American- Jamaican single mother.

Nearly two decades after his death, Biggie is still the greatest rapper of all time. Christopher Wallace, the infamous Brooklyn-bred rapper, would have been 42 years old, had he survived the four gunshots that killed him in 1997. Monday marks the 18-year anniversary of the Notorious B.I.G.'s death.

Life after death biggie smalls meaning