Bedford-Stuyvesant remembers native son, Biggie

BY KERRY BURKE AND DAVE GOLDINER
He's B.I.G. as ever on the streets of Brooklyn.
Nearly 12 years after the killing of Biggie (The Notorious B.I.G.) Smalls, the rap star's memory and platinum-selling music still loom large over the changing Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood where he lived.
"You feel him every time you hear his songs," said B.J. Miller, 47, who grew up nearby. Abraham (O.G.) Widdi, who gave Smalls his first job, bagging groceries, said the rapper's killers robbed the world of a prophetic voice and a gifted artist.
"They didn't give him a chance to go all the way to the top," said Widdi, 43, clutching his slain pal's photo.
"He was just starting out." "Notorious," a film about the too-short life and violent death of Smalls, opens this week.
It chronicles the rapper's made-for-the-movies journey from the corner of St. James Place and Fulton St. to stardom. He died, age 24, in a hail of bullets in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, six months after sometime rival Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas.
No one has ever been charged in either crime, spawning conspiracy theories about gangs, dirty cops and feuding East and West Coast rappers. The flick stars rotund rapper Jamal (Gravy) Woolard — a "dead ringer" for Smalls, according to Miller.
The late rapper's son, Christopher Jordan Smalls, plays his dad as a child. "This movie makes you dance, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry," Sean (Diddy) Combs said at the premiere. "It makes you respect life."
Born Christopher Wallace, Biggie Smalls was just 11 days old when he moved to BedStuy, then a hardscrabble stretch of liquor stores and bo-degas.
The future star learned his trade on Fulton St., where he shot dice, gulped wine and smoked pot. Eventually, he started selling crack to make money when his strict mom was away at work. Few dreamed the chubby teen would wind up famous.
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