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Back to Biggie's 15-Year Death Anniversary

Too $hort

Gino DePinto

Well Biggie did me a huge favor. New York was like a brick wall to my career. I couldn’t do anything out here except interviews. Like I couldn’t do s--- -- not a show, nobody cared. I had an argument with a bell hop once [in New York]. Big Daddy Kane opened a show for me, I was like, “Dude, I sell millions of records. I’m pretty popular.” [The bell hop] was like, “Never heard of you, kid.” He’s taking my luggage to my room for me and he’s like, “Get the f--- out of here kid.” Big called me to do a song with him, we did ‘The World is Filled…’ After that, I got calls from Jay-Z. I did a song with Lil’ Kim, Erick Sermon was doing songs with me. I went from "Get the f--- out of here kid” on the elevator to me being on the streets of New York and people going ‘Too $hort, respect.” New York never really took to Too $hort but they liked certain songs that I did with New York artists. Biggie opened those doors for me. And it made New York artists want to do guest appearances with me. It had never happened before, and I know they all did it ‘cause Big did it first.

The one thing that always sticks out to me about that session is that I got to witness the technique. Every rapper writes down lyrics and raps or he freestyles. But I never seen the technique [that Biggie used before]. We're in the room, the music's playing in the studio, people are walking in and out passing around drinks, there's a lot of weed being smoked, a lot of talking, a lot of noise. Even Big is interacting and s---, but somehow, while all this is going on, he's writing, memorizing a verse in his head. I got my pen and my paper and I'm getting my part together. He's like, "I'm ready. Put me in the booth." I'm not saying anything about all of this. I'm just watching. No pen, no paper, never wrote s---. He goes in there and he starts rapping, gets his little tone together. He just did it in like one take. I'm like, asking, "Did you already have that? Where the f--- did that come from?" They're like, "Big don't write s---. He just raps that s---." I don't think Biggie was making it known at that time how he worked. But Jay-Z adopted it from Biggie. I assume, I think he did. I don't know why they started doing that. When Biggie died, Jay was doing a lot of things just to keep that Big spirit alive. He probably always looked up to Big. Biggie and Jay-Z was E-40 and Too $hort. Jay more or less popularized that [no pen or paper technique].