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http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/18/arts/pop-music-biggie-smalls-rap-s-man-of-the-moment.html

Kinda cool seeing now how a now legendary rapper was profiled at the time.

Such a moment isn't an unlikely occurrence in Harlem or any place where hip-hop fans are in abundance. With both his debut album, "Ready to Die," and the single "Juicy" having gone gold, the 20-year-old rapper, who is known professionally as the Notorious B.I.G. and to his mother as Chris Wallace, is the rapper of the moment.

In a realm where the demand for newness is a constant, it's little surprise that despite releases by veterans like Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg, Public Enemy and Arrested Development, nearly all the most acclaimed albums this year have come from newcomers: Nas, Method Man and Keith Murray.

Biggie Smalls is not the best vocalist of the group, but he stands out because his lyrics mix autobiographical details about crime and violence with emotional honesty, telling how he felt while making a living as a drug dealer.

The evening after the Apollo show, he sat on the stairs outside the third-floor apartment in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn where he still lives with his mother, Voletta Wallace, and talked about his life. "I used to sell crack," he said. "My customers were ringing my bell, and they would come up on the steps and smoke right here. They knew where I lived; they knew my moms."

On moving to the burbs.

And he has put a lot in his pocket. Next month he will move his mother from the apartment in which she has lived for 25 years and into a house in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. But despite new-found economic independence and the fear he feels while sitting in his own home, he is reluctant to move.

"I could never see myself moving in the suburbs," he said. "It ain't going to be right, and the lyrics are going to be soundin' nasty. I know it. There won't be nothing to rap about except the birds."

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/18/arts/pop-music-biggie-smalls-rap-s-man-of-the-moment.html

I never read music media back in 94, it was mostly Hot 97 and MTV, when they showed music videos, so it was cool reading this.