Bad Boy Concerts Celebrate The Notorious B.I.G. May 20th & 21st at Barclays Center
About as big a hip hop hootenanny as could possibly occur happened on Friday and Saturday nights at The Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It was the start of the Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour that sees Diddy on the road with the artists that made Bad Boy Records one of the most important labels on the nineties: Lil’ Kim, The Lox, Biggie’s widow Faith Evans, Total, and Mase as well as relatively recent signees like Carl Thomas (whose debuted was released in 2000) and French Montana (who first album came just three years ago). Those artists will reconvene in late August and begin a U.S. tour that includes dates at MSG as well as in Newark’s Prudential Center in September.
Somewhere along the line someone had the happy idea to schedule the show on what would have been The Notorious B.I.G.’s 44th birthday and what was already a massive event became an epic one…and then two. Junior M.A.F.I.A., Mary J Blige, Jay Z (even though he sold his stake in the building), Usher, Busta Rhymes, DMX, and Nas all turned up as special guests. It was an embarrassment of riches for fans and a love fest for Biggie who grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. As the story goes, in 1992 a certain Sean Combs who had a gig doing A&R for Uptown Records, heard Smalls’ demo and it wasn’t long before Bad Boy was born with Ready To Die leading the charge in ’94.
Bigs knew how to handle success and he invited his talented friends like Lil’ Cease and Lil’ Kim to share in it. As Lil’ Cease said to me, shortly before crushing my head like an empty beer can in a killer lock, “He put his homeboys on and got them record deals.” Junior M.A.F.I.A. – featuring Kim and Cease as well as Biggie himself on four tracks – released their first disc Conspiracy in 95. Cease continued, “He meant a lot not just to Brooklyn and New York but the whole East Coast…” Almost two decades after his death, it’s easy to see how much he meant and still means to hip hop worldwide.
