Just reminds me why I can never respect Diddy. He is a snake who puts profit before everything: before morals, before fairness, and in this case before the life of his "alleged" best friend. You didn't have to be a gang analyst to know that Big coming to LA so soon after Pac's death would be seen as him taking a victory lap. Pac got killed over some Cali bullshyt but overall he was loved by too many people for them to let Big live. He was gonna get got, period.
Life After Death was gonna sell well regardless of whether Big did promo in Cali. nikkas growing up today don't recognize how shyt was back then: if you were "hot" you were going plat. Rappers who went gold were considered failures, and if you sold 300k you were underground. Today if nikkas sell 300k it's celebrated. Big was going to sell tons of records, he was dominating the airwaves, all of NY was behind him. He
DID NOT need to go beg for dudes to buy his album in Cali.
I don't know if Big was a real dude in the streets or not; I know he sold drugs but I dunno if if he was some big dealer. Regardless, the nikka was crying about not wanting to go to Cali, and Diddy made him. I'm not gonna call Big soft or a phoney for that: he was from the streets, he knew how thirsty nikkas could get over someone elses success.
I'll be real, I'm a Pac stan till I die and really didn't like Biggie when I was a kid. But I respected him because he was hip hop, and I respect hip hop. I have no respect for Sean Combs, and never will have any.