BEATRIFULSt. James Place →

Who was Christopher Wallace?

SizzleC · St. James Place · ten songs, 1972–1997. Each chapter below is the story one song tells, then the lines it is built on, quoted word for word from the page linked beside them (fetched and checked 16 Oct 2026).

How this album was made: the songs are told in the third person by original voices; nobody imitates his voice, no recording of his is sampled and none of his lyrics are quoted. His own words appear only as short attributed quotes from interviews. Some lines are scene-setting (a key on a string, a stoop at dusk) and say so in the notes; every factual line comes from a row below. The night of March 9, 1997 is told from the record only: no one was ever formally charged and the case remains officially unsolved; theories about who was responsible are left out. In the videos, the neighbour who grows up across St. James Place is an invented witness; nobody on screen portrays him or anyone close to him.

01 · Cumberland

Christopher George Latore Wallace was born at Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn on May 21, 1972, the only child of Jamaican immigrant parents: his mother a preschool teacher, his father a welder. Three months before his third birthday his father left, and his mother raised him while working two jobs, in Clinton Hill near the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant, at 226 St. James Place.

02 · Honor Student

At five he was already bigger than most of the other children at the Quincy-Lexington Open Door Day Care Center. He graduated from his parish elementary school in 1982 and excelled in English at Queen of All Saints Middle School. Humor, he said, had been his way of coping with hardship since elementary school. Soul, funk and disco filled his early years.

03 · The Roof

As a child he spent most of his time on Fulton Street, where he was introduced to drug dealing, alcoholism and gambling; around twelve a friend introduced him to buying and selling. He hid the money on the roof of his building; his mother had no idea until he was twenty. At 201 pounds the block called him Big. Despite being an honor student, he dropped out of school at sixteen, in the years of the crack epidemic.

04 · Nine Months

In 1989 he was arrested in Brooklyn on weapons charges and sentenced to five years of probation. The following year he was arrested for violating that probation, and a year later he was arrested in North Carolina for dealing crack cocaine and spent nine months in jail before making bail.

05 · Demo Tape

As a teenager he formed a trio, the Techniques, and recorded first songs at the home studio of New Orleans saxophonist Donald Harrison. After jail, in 1991, he made his first demo tape. Local DJ Mister Cee promoted it and sent it to The Source, which featured it in its Unsigned Hype column in March 1992; Sean Combs read it and arranged to meet him. He composed his lyrics in his head rather than writing them down.

06 · Hit Factory

Signed to Uptown Records in March 1992, he lost his label home when Combs was fired in July 1993, a month before his daughter T'yanna was born on August 8, 1993; he promised her everything she wanted. He became the first artist signed to Combs's new label, Bad Boy Records. In June 1994 he met R&B singer Faith Evans at a photoshoot and married her on August 4, 1994. His debut, Ready to Die, recorded at the Hit Factory, was released on September 13, 1994, and reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200 with 57,000 copies in its first week; he said he felt 'broke and depressed' while making it.

07 · Two Coasts

At The Source Awards in August 1995 he won Best New Artist, Lyricist of the Year and Live Performer of the Year, and his debut was named Album of the Year; by the end of the year he was the top-selling male solo artist and rapper on the U.S. pop and R&B charts, though in October he said he had not yet been paid for the album. He and Tupac Shakur had become friends in Los Angeles. In an April 1995 interview from prison, Shakur accused Andre Harrell, Combs and Wallace of prior knowledge of the November 30, 1994 robbery in which he was shot five times; they denied any involvement ('I had nothing to do with that'). Shakur was shot in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996 and died six days later; Faith Evans recalled that Wallace called her in tears that night, and he expressed regret over Shakur's death.

08 · Peace of Mind

In 1996 an accident broke his left leg; he spent months in hospital, first in a wheelchair and then with a cane he used until his death, and kept working on the album. His son, Christopher 'C.J.' Wallace Jr., was born on October 29, 1996. Life After Death was made over eighteen months in New York City, Trinidad and Los Angeles and finished in January 1997; his mother said he lost about thirty pounds. He spoke of wanting to focus on his 'peace of mind' and his family and friends.

09 · Wilshire and Fairfax

He went to California in February 1997 to promote Life After Death and film a video. On March 8, after the Soul Train Music Awards, he attended a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum that was closed early for overcrowding. At about 12:45 a.m. on March 9 his group stopped at a red light at Wilshire Boulevard and South Fairfax Avenue, fifty yards away, and he was shot. He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. He was twenty-four. No one was ever formally charged; the case remains officially unsolved.

10 · Fulton and St. James

His funeral was held in Manhattan on March 18, 1997; the procession was driven through his old Clinton Hill neighborhood one last time, and thousands lined the streets. Life After Death was released sixteen days after his death and debuted at No. 1. In June 2019, in a downpour, the corner of Fulton Street and St. James Place was renamed in his honor; his mother, Voletta Wallace, said she had fought for it for 22 years. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020; that August his son released a house remix of one of his songs. His mother died on February 21, 2025. His memorial foundation's yearly event reads B.I.G. as 'Books Instead of Guns'.