Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.

The stories about the notorious BIG are insane.

He was arrested almost too many times to count. He entered adulthood as a

crack dealer, and he left this world as one of its most famous hip-hop stars, murdered mysteriously.

The notorious B.I.G. altered the course of hip-hop, but the release of his debut album ready to die.

An album that served as a soundtrack of sorts for the highly publicized violent beef between himself and his one-time

friend, fellow rapper Tupac Shakur. But the notorious BIG's career wasn't all about the beef.

It was also, obviously, about the music he made, great music.

That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from

my Melotron called Cola Party Hop, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to I'll make love to you by boys to men.

And why would I play you that specific slice of baby face-panned cheese could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on September 13th, 1994.

And that was the day the notorious B.I.G released his debut album Ready to Die,

marking the beginning of his very short, impactful, and notorious career.

On this, part one of a special two-part episode, dealing crack, spitting beef, easy flow, hard beats, and the notorious

B-I-G. I'm Jake Brennan, and always will be about opportunity.

The rub is that depending on one station in life, opportunity comes in different forms.

For freeway Rick Ross, an illiterate high school dropout living in south central Los Angeles in the late 1970s, opportunity came in the form

of rock cocaine. A born hustler, he couldn't believe the profit potential of this familiar

drug went cut into a new form. Cocaine users couldn't believe how cheap it was, and Colombian wholesale

distributors couldn't believe the ingenuity and

ambition of their American street supplying partners. America. Opportunity for all. For freeway

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