Posted by
Adrienne Crezo in
Blogs & Internet,
Crime & Law on May 30, 2011 at 7:50 am
Hacker group The Lulz Boat pirated PBS.org and posted an article claiming Tupac Shakur–who was shot four times and died in September, 1996–is alive and well and living in New Zealand. They also claim rapper Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.) was housed in the same resort for a time after his death.
LulzBoat created a new page within PBS.org and posted the passwords of PBS journalists, login information and “sensitive information” about PBS stations.
According to CNN:
The Lulz Boat claims it was “less than impressed” after watching the network’s program “WikiSecrets” and “decided to sail our Lulz Boat over the PBS servers for further… perusing.”
The “WikiSecrets” documentary, which aired last week on the PBS show “Frontline,” talked to U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s father and close friends.
Manning, a military intelligence analyst, is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents that ended up on the WikiLeaks website — one of the largest leaks of classified material in U.S. history.
Whether PBS has gotten their security issues under control is debatable, but the article and any LulzBoat references have been removed from the site.
Link | Image credit: Kurt Strazdins/NewsCom
Posted by
Jill Harness in
Music,
Neatorama Exclusives on April 27, 2009 at 7:28 am
I know many readers may not like rap and may complain about the selection this week, but like all of these articles, the band was chosen by user requests. If you’ve got a band you want to see tidbits about, just list them in the comments, thanks! Alternatively, if you want to see more rap artists, leave them in the comments too.
- The Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, was born Christopher George Latore Wallace on May 21, 1972. His father was a small-time Jamaican politician and his mother was a Jamaican pre-school teacher. His father left the family when Biggie was only two and his mother was rarely home, as she had to work two jobs to pay the bills.
- Always a hefty lad, Biggie was nicknamed “Big” by the time he was ten years old. In adulthood, he measured about 6’3” and anywhere from 300 to 380 pounds.
- At his school, he was a great student and won several awards in English programs. This master of the language would later prove crucial in his rapping career.
- Biggie grew up during the peak of the crack epidemic and, like many kids around him, he ended up dealing drugs. Although he was selling crack since he was 12, his mother never knew about it until he grew up. He continued to sell drugs up until first child was born, at which time, his label manager, Sean “Puffy” Combs, insisted he stopped selling for good.
- His high school, George Westinghouse Information Technology High, also had Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes and DMX in attendance. This was the same period that Biggie began rapping. He performed in a few groups, the Old Gold Brothers and the Techniques, and he sang on the streets by himself. By seventeen, he decided to drop out of school.
Notorious had long had a problem with the law, starting with his 1989 arrest for weapons charges. The next year, he was arrest on a probation violation and a year after that he was arrested for dealing crack. The third time, he spent nine months in jail. Much later in his career, he was arrested in 1996 outside of a New York club for threatening to kill two fans, punching one in the face and smashing the windows of their taxi cab. That same year, he was arrested again for drug and weapons charges. In 1997, he was ordered to pay $41,000 to someone who claimed to have been beaten and robbed by Biggie and his entourage in 1995, but the criminal robbery charges were dropped.- After his 1991 release from prison, B.I.G. decided to release a demo tape under the alias “Biggie Smalls,” the name of a gangster in the 1975 movie Let’s Do It Again. He later discovered the name was already in use and decided to change it to “The Notorious B.I.G.”
- In 1992, The Source featured Biggie in their “Unsigned Hype” column, dedicated to unsigned rappers brimming with talent. This helped him get the attention of the A&R department of Uptown Records and one of their producers, Puff Daddy. He signed to Uptown, but almost immediately left to join Puffy’s brand new label, Bad Boy Records.
- Biggie’s big break came when he added vocals to a remix to the Mary J. Blige song “Real Love,” which reached #7 on the charts.
- In 1994, Notorious married singer Faith Evans only nine days after meeting her at a photo shoot for Bad Boy Records. Only four days later, he had his first commercial success with the song “Juicy,” which reached #27 on the charts.
- His first full-length album, Ready To Die, was released at a time hip hop was dominated by West Coast artists. The album reached #13 on the charts and was certified four times platinum. Rolling Stone said the album “almost single-handedly… shifted the focus back to East Coast rap”.
- By 1996, he was the top-selling male solo artist and rapper on the US pop and R&B charts. He also won the award for Best New Artist, Lyricist of the Year, Live Performer of the Year and Debut Album of the Year at the Source Awards. The Billboard Awards named him Rap Artist of the Year.
Source #1, #2, #3
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Of course, the pendulum swings both ways, and Tyruss Himes, a.k.a. Big Syke, was implicated of the murder by tv channel KTTV and XXL magazine and filed a suit against them for defamation. His case was later thrown out of court.
