The infamous BIG NFT dropped 25 years after his death

No matter how deep your connection to The Notorious BIG is, those in charge of the trailblazing rapper’s estate believe it may run even deeper. “Wait in a digital line to drop $100 on a piece of AI-generated art” deeper.

On Tuesday afternoon, the estate made available — first to a list of fans who have demonstrated their devotion and then to the general public — a 3,000-piece NFT collection that uses algorithms to revive the late icon’s signature look. The Notorious NFT is dedicated to the proposition that keeping an artist alive isn’t so much about keeping them in your heart as keeping them in your digital wallet.

For the backers, this gives an opportunity to convey Biggie’s essence in a way that even the rawest bootleg can’t – but as with so many things web3, not everyone will see the benefits.

“This is a chance to give his fans a piece of his legacy instead of just pushing his legacy on them,” said Wayne Barrow, a longtime friend of the rapper who now helps manage his estate. “That’s what makes web3 great – you can participate instead of just buying what someone is selling.”

The drop’s big pop, Barrow said, isn’t even the digital art. It’s membership in a collective that will be empowered to decide the fate of “Fulton Street Freestyle” — a famous bit of viral video in which a 17-year-old Christopher Wallace improvised lyrics on a Brooklyn street corner to adoring crowds.

The performance has never been licensed out. But the 3,000 NFT owners will get to vote if a paying entity that wants to use it as a sample or in other derivative works can do so. Members may even see some revenue from such a sale, although organizers say the details have yet to be worked out.

The drop is called “Sky’s The Limit,” a reference to Biggie’s posthumous 1997 hit about dreaming big — and a sly allusion to how far technology has come from the song’s world, where he’s the only man with a cellphone.

Biggie died 25 years ago, of course, gunned down after an industry party in Los Angeles in the wake of a coastal rap feud with Tupac Shakur, who was killed months earlier. The posthumous celebration – and the market economy – started almost immediately, with “Life After Death” going diamond (10 million copies).

It has hardly slowed since, fueling such events as a record $600,000 sale of the famous crown several years ago. To mark what would have been his 50th birthday this year, the Empire State Building lit up in Biggie colors as Combs’ label released a deluxe box set of “Life After Death.”

But no commercialization seduces like a web3 commercialization. Barrow, entrepreneur Elliot Osagie and Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace recently teamed up with OneOf, an NFT company advised by Quincy Jones who previously auctioned off an NFT of an unreleased Whitney Houston demo track.

For this, OneOf chose from a series of Biggie’s famous looks and customized them for NFT. It’s a “generative drop,” meaning an AI takes a handful of templates and makes small differences to spit out unique images — changing a background color, for example. There is no artist per se — the organizers worked with the animation company Seriously Fun.

To determine who gets first crack, a two-hour pre-sale “allowance list” was assembled from fans who sent testaments to their devotion. Supporters say they wanted to avoid too many speculators who would later drive the price up, but acknowledge that this is almost inevitable (and perhaps desirable).

Biggie was known for his deep-voiced, laid-back rapping style that chronicled his struggles, glorified his ambitions, and reveled in his successes (and excesses). His music was a commentary on class, crime, wealth, death and other topics that had not previously been rapped about in that way, a reason why he was named the greatest rapper of all time by The Source, among many others.

Organizers say even simple images, like Biggie holding a bag of cash, come with commentary that fits his music.

“Every single item has a story, and that’s often not the story people understand,” said Christopher Sealey, OneOf’s creative director. “We have one with Biggie holding a bag of cash, and the reason we included it is not because he was talking about money, but because if you talk to his neighbors even now, they’ll all say how generous he was to the community. . “

Voletta Wallace called the NFT a chance “to remember my son Christopher.” It will give fans “an opportunity to participate in and honor their love for him and his music,” she said in an earlier statement.

OneOf’s Whitney Houston demo sold for nearly $1 million to a single buyer. Grimes also sold a collection for nearly $6 million, only to see it later plummet in value. At $100 a pop, this will generate $300,000 – less money and perhaps less trouble.

Not that all musician NFT take off at once. Embattled singer Chris Brown saw just 3 percent of his collection sold a week after its release last month. (Sealey and Barrow say they expect the Biggie NFT to sell out within minutes.)

The NFT release is related to an effort called “The Brook,” a so-called Biggie “metaverse” where people can assume avatars and move around the world conjured by his songs. It can strike users as either the future or a new participatory storytelling or a branding overkill that erodes the purity that made so many people fall in love with an artist in the first place.

In any case, the principals say that it suits the rapper perfectly.

“When I think of Biggie, I think of a man sitting in his home looking out the window and giving you an overview of what he saw,” Barrow said. “He connected you to the story by putting himself there, but he also brought you into it. So in Biggie’s mind, the metaverse already existed.”

But what about the speculative bubble inherent to NFTs. Is this a unique tribute? Or just a code-heavy way to make more money?

Sealey said he believes the Biggie drop shows a way forward and stays true to hip-hop’s roots. “The whole essence of hip-hop is the remixing of culture,” he said. “We give fans creative control over the most iconic freestyle of all time.”

Technical tools like digital watermarking, AI art and the unifying ethos of blockchain, he said, go far beyond reissuing albums to recreating an artist’s work in the present.

“This is not a posthumous drop,” Sealey said. “It brings everything to the here and now.”