One Of the tasks doled out to journalists around every year's end is the compilation of the annual list of the dead. In the dying days of 1997 the job devolved to me, probably because I happened to be within eyesight at the time, no doubt while I was puffing on a fag and whistling at girls beside office lift, as is my wont.
It was an interesting business. I hadn't even realised that Burgess Meredith had died, nor that Shirley Crabtree, better known as the wrestler Big Daddy, had shuffled off to the big ring in the sky. Nor did I know that Cecil Lewis, the Irish writer who died last January, had won an Oscar in 1938 for cowriting the screenplay of Pygmalion.
Reflecting on the famous names who have departed this life leads naturally to speculation about those who are likely to follow them before too long. Predicting imminent celebrity demises has been a popular pastime in recent years, particularly on the Internet, where celebrity "deathpools" have flourished. Sadly, the Ill Celebrity Service, which kept Internet users updated on those celebrities who were feeling a little poorly, thereby allowing the odds on their demise to be altered accordingly, has closed down, so punters will have to rely on media reports and the natural narrowing of the odds that occurs with old age.
Returning to 1997, one of the people I decided to include on my celebrity obit list was that of Christopher Wallace. The name probably may mean little to many of you, but Mr Wallace was an interesting man and deserves to be remembered. He was better known as Biggie Smalls, or the Notorious B.I.G., a rap artist huge in terms of both girth and popularity.He was murdered in February 1997, at the aged of 24.
Ongoing hostilities
His death seemed to be related to ongoing hostilities between two schools of rap music, the east coast rappers represented by Bad Boy Entertainment, of which the Notorious B.I.G. was a part, and the west coast, Los Angeles-based faction, principally represented by Death Row Records and its leading money-maker, the late Tupac Shakur.
The rivalry between the two labels erupted into outright hostility in 1994, while Shakur was on trial for rape in New York. He was shot five times while entering a New York studio.
The shooting was notable for several reasons. Firstly, Shakur, rather improbably, survived. Secondly, he was shot at a studio used by Bad Boy Entertainment, and there were rumours that he had been set up by someone within the label. Thirdly, the incident produced a notable quote from Shakur's bodyguard, who watched his boss fall to the ground after being shot but refused to kneel down himself, even though the would-be assassins were waving a gun at him. "I wasn't goin' out like no bitch," the bodyguard subsequently told reporters, dismissing decades of feminism with one simile. Tupac Shakur's luck ran out in 1996, when he was killed as he left a boxing match in Las Vegas.
Then, in February 1997, almost six months after Shakur's death, The Notorious B.I.G. was shot dead outside a night club in Los Angeles, in what may have been a reprisal for Shakur's death.
Sentimental memorial
"Biggie" has since been the subject of a rap eulogy by the owner of his record label, Sean "Puffy" Coombs, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, and Smalls's grieving widow, Faith Evans. This touching memorial is entitled I'll Be Missing You and has sold by the bucketload, confirming the public's absolute lack of discrimination when it comes to the purchase of anything sufficiently coated in sentimentality.
This lack of discrimination is further complicated by the fact that the Notorious B.I.G. was not, according to some, a very nice man, given that he was a former crack dealer who was once charged with assault for, allegedly, responding to a fan who asked for his autograph by beating him with a baseball bat.
There were also dark rumours about his knowledge of Shakur's impending death. If he was aware of a plan to end Shakur's life, it is highly unlikely that Biggie would have been tempted to intervene, given that Shakur had released a song in which he detailed - in graphic language, needless to say - his alleged affair with Biggie's wife, the aforementioned, grieving Faith Evans. Shakur also intimated that Biggie had been involved in a $40,000 robbery in the course of which Shakur was injured by gunfire.
Male aggression
Claims like this, in the world of rap music, tend to carry with them the potential for imminent loss of life and Shakur may well have paid the price for dissing ("disrespecting", for the benefit of more mature readers) Biggie and his missus. After all, rap is a bastion of the kind of dim, aggressively male behaviour more usually associated with duels, wars and rugby clubs - and, it is only fair to add, with certain branches of the music business. For example, the R & B singer Junior Wells once found himself being berated by a heckler in the audience as he gave a concert. Wells solved the problem by pulling out his pistol and shooting the heckler from the stage.
While Bad Boy Entertainment has flourished since Biggie's death - his last, posthumously-released album, ironically entitled Life After Death, was predictably a best-seller - the Death Row label is about to receive its coup de grace, as its parent company, Universal/ Interscope, which is owned by the drinks company Seagram, is to stop distributing the label's releases in an effort to distance itself from rap-related violence. Death Row is currently under investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney over alleged links with gang activity and drug money and its founder, Suge Knight, is serving nine years for breach of parole.
So it seems that the Notorious B.I.G. managed to smash the opposition after all, albeit at a considerable cost to himself.