Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the death of the Notorious B.I.G. Christopher Wallace was shot and killed at the age of 24 in Los Angeles, California on March 9, 1997.
Appearing on the Scoop B Radio Podcast , Oakland hip hop legend Too $hort marveled at the talents of both The Notorious B.I.G. and the late Tupac Shakur.
“With BIG, it would be like – that whole technique of not writing raps,” Too $hort told Scoop B Radio host, Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson. “He would just sit there appearing to not be working on the song and then he would just go “I’m ready,” and then would just go into the booth…and its perfect – like “what the fuck?! How did you come up with that shit?”
Click Here To Listen To Too $hort’s Interview In It’s Entirety
Too $hort said that 2PAC’s routine was a bit different. “He would be in the studio…he would hear the track – the track we were working on, and he would start writing,” he said.
“He would be done in like 5-10 minutes! The fucking verse will take me 30 minutes maybe – 45 minutes to an hour to write one verse. I’m just sitting there trying to do something real tight, trying to make it all make sense … the man writes as fast as he can write. He writing nonstop and its rhyming, and its prolific and it’s a 2pac classic…everybody in the room would be saying the same thing. You can’t write one verse as fast as he can write one song.”
Too $hort says he believes that 2Pac and Biggie had the rarity of being both talented and gifted. “I would have to say – both guys can be gifted, wouldn’t you just say both,” said Too $hort.
“That’s a gift to have that ability to express yourself in that fashion with 2PAC writing that fast and Biggie being able to put these words together in his head without pen and paper…and it just go right. It comes out and everybody’s like “it’s timeless.” So, I would go gifted on those guys, but I know what you mean … when I think about people who are talented when it comes to making songs, and they just know how to put to together, you start to formulate and you just put it together…but these guys, they’re like something out of earth with that ability to express themselves on a song.”
