Touré is calling out 50 Cent’s Netflix docuseries Sean Combs: The Reckoning for using a Biggie Smalls interview clip in a way he says is misleading and historically inaccurate.
In a TikTok video shared this week, Touré clarified that the viral soundbite from The Notorious B.I.G., where the rapper says he fears someone will kill him, was not recorded shortly before Biggie’s death in March 1997, as the documentary suggests by putting footage from the night the rapper was murdered immediately after the clip. Instead, he says the soundbite came from an interview he conducted years earlier, during Biggie’s Ready to Die era.
“So I did that interview, he’s talking to me,” Touré said. “The doc places this right before the Peterson Auto Museum, March 9th. But you know what? We did that interview on the first album.”
Touré explained that Biggie’s comments about danger and fear referred to street life, not the East Coast–West Coast tensions that defined the final months of his life.
“That’s him talking about the street, not the [rap] game,” Touré said. “That’s him saying, ‘I’m afraid of getting knocked off on the street.’”
According to the journalist, the interview took place in the hallway of Biggie’s building and members of his entourage stood guard to protect him in case anyone from the neighborhood tried anything.
“If anyone started walking up, somebody from the crew would go down with a hammer,” he recalled. “Big said to me, ‘I am afraid, afraid of the street. But I gotta be out here. I gotta live. I gotta show ‘em my music. I gotta show ‘em I’m not afraid, but I am definitely afraid.’”
The journalist's description of the hallway setting, and the tenor of Big's comments (though not the rapper's exact words), match this December, 1994 New York Times article he wrote entitled "Biggie Smalls, Rap's Man of the Moment."
Touré emphasized that the moment shown in the film had nothing to do with Biggie’s impending trip to Los Angeles years later in March 1997, a trip many believe Biggie felt uneasy about due to rising tensions following Tupac Shakur’s death.
“But the doc makes it like that bite about his fear relates to the Big–Pac situation and his fear ahead of going to L.A.,” Touré said. “He may have been afraid because he knew he was in danger of being in L.A. in that moment, but that clip is way out of context. It’s from years earlier.”