Biggie Smalls Shooting Location — Los Angeles

In the early hours of 9 March 1997, Christopher Wallace — the Notorious B.I.G., known as Biggie Smalls — was shot and killed while stopped at a red light on Wilshire Boulevard near South Fairfax Avenue in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles. He had just attended the Soul Train Music Awards and an after-party at the Petersen Automotive Museum. An unknown shooter in a dark Chevrolet Impala fired into his GMC Suburban; he was struck four times and died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center shortly after. He was 24 years old. The murder has never been solved.

Biggie's death came less than six months after the killing of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, and the two deaths together — representing the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop rivalry at its most destructive — marked one of the most significant moments in the history of the music. The feud between Death Row Records (West Coast) and Bad Boy Records (East Coast), inflamed by media coverage and escalating public provocations between artists and executives, had created an atmosphere in which violence seemed increasingly likely. Whether the killings were directly connected to that rivalry remains disputed.

The intersection of Wilshire and Fairfax is an ordinary Los Angeles street corner that occasionally draws visitors aware of its significance. There is no permanent marker at the site. Biggie is buried in Pinelawn Memorial Park in Farmingdale, New York. The Petersen Automotive Museum, where he had attended the after-party, is one block from the shooting location and is a major LA tourist destination, though visitors come primarily for its automotive exhibits.