The Notorious BIG crown up for auction at Sotheby's

by Alessandra Baldini (ANSA) - NEW YORK, AUG 26 - The crown worn by the rapperNotorious BIG during a photo shoot taken a few days before being killed and a series of love letters from a teenager Tupac Shakur star at the first auction of Sotheby's dedicated to hip-hop world. An event scheduled in New York on September 15th which, in the intentions of the organizers, will allow an unprecedented insight into two of the most important figures in rap linked in life but also in death.
    The correspondence from Shakur, killed in a shooting in Las Vegas in 1996, includes 22 love letters from 16-year-old rapper Kathy Loy, who was his girlfriend for two months when both of them attended Baltimore School for the Art. A two-month love story during as Tupac confides to his friend his dreams of musician, the doubts of a career in rap and his friendship with Jada Pinkett-Smith: the future actress was his schoolmate.
    The former friend and rival Notorious BIG was initially suspected of the shooting in which Tupac was the victim, killed himself six months later by machine gun shots while he was invisible in Los Angeles. The crown, worn by the rapper (real name Christopher Wallace, but also known as BiggieSmalls or simply Biggie), had been used a few days before that second shooting for a portrait of photographer Barron Claiborne (BC Africanus) who now puts it all auction.
   The image, considered "the most recognizable of hip-hop culture", was later used for a famous mural in Brooklyn, the neighborhood where Biggie was born, in which the rapper is portrayed as "King of New York". (HANDLE).