 orange sky audio presents. It was all a dream, biggie, and the world that made him, by Justin Tinsley. Narrated for you by Dion Graham. Introduction. For the past quarter century, a quote from Christopher Wallace has resonated with me. It's from an interview filmed just two weeks before his murder, and it's haunting because at its core lives in innocence, a sort of pure, unfiltered honesty that we all want to believe about the purity in ourselves, despite the mistakes we've made. And Wallace, known the world over and immortalized in history as the notorious B.I.G., short for business instead of game, or Biggie Smalls or Big, was far from perfect, in many ways, as this book will establish. Yet as we'll also come to discover, Biggie carried with him a soul so genuine that those who knew him still laugh, cry, and speak with deep reverence at the mention of his name. It's inspiring if we're being real. Every life ends with two dates on its tombstone, the day of arrival and the day of transition. But as the life and times of Christopher Wallace attest, it's not the dates that matter. Well, I take that back. They absolutely matter, but it's the hyphens separating them that matters more than anything. That dash represents the entirety of our lives, the inspirations the defeats, the highs, the lows, the joys, the pain. All within the context of the world we were raised in, and in Biggie's case, oftentimes battled to insist that our lives were actually worth a damn. That dash means everything. The mistakes we made and the lessons we learned, the pitfalls we couldn't avoid and the legacy we leave behind. The first day Christopher took his breath in Brooklyn, New York in the early morning hours of Los Angeles, California, when he took his last, will be deeply examined. They have to be. But it's that dash where this story lives. So much of Biggie's life story lives in that aforementioned interview. He sat in a California parking lot with rap city host Joe Clare as he filmed the video for Hypnotize, the long video he'd be in from his forthcoming Life After Death double album. The date was February 24, 1997. Two and a half years had passed since his first album, Ready to Die, one of the most impressive debuts in rap history, had lyrically detonated shelves nationwide. It was only five years removed from when he and his fellow Brooklynite DJ Mr. C, Calvin Lebrun, had sat in the office of an up-and-coming music executive named Sean Puffy Combs, and that executive had made him a promise. I can have a record out on you by summer, Puffy had said, leaning over his desk. Y'all whatever seesay man, a still very shy big had answered. Sample complete. Ready to continue?