evidence: When Christopher George Latore Wallace was fatally shot at a Los Angeles traffic light on March 9, 1997, he was 24 years old and had released one album. But his stature at the time was towering, due both to his peerless artistic gifts and the desperately competitive atmosphere within hip-hop, viewed either rightly or wrongly as one of the few career dreams for Black kids boxed in by poverty, mass incarceration, racist drug policy, and corrupt, violent policing. That stature has only grown in the 25 years since. If the Notorious B.I.G. isn’t the greatest rapper ever (he is), then he’s the most respected. His narrative mastery, linguistic joy, dizzyingly rhythmic flows, emotional depth, and wry wisdom have never been equaled. Here’s why Biggie Smalls is still the illest. [...] - ‘Da B Side (Dirty)’ Da Brat feat. Jermaine Dupri and the Notorious B.I.G. (1994) [...] "The Wickedest Freestyle" is just straight bars of pure pain, with some of the former horror-core-adjacent MC’s most punishing lines. On this 1994 session, from Funkmaster Flex’s Hot 97 radio show, Biggie compares his mic prowess to at least three STDs ("Herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, gettin’ rid of ya") before boasting that "MCs break fast like flapjacks and bacon" any time he steps near a booth. No one’s measured up since. —W.D.