SXSW

Throughout the craziness of SXSW, the week-long music and film festival that takes place in Austin, Texas every year, Hip Hop has been showcased in many forms, through panels, performances, interviews, social media posts, etc. On Saturday (March 18), My Mixtapez bought it back to the 90s, presenting a Biggie art installation to honor The Notorious B.I.G. Featuring unreleased photos of Big, this tribute to Biggie also included special guest performances by The LOX and Diddy.

B.I.G. X Bystorm X Jordan. @jamescruz1 #bystorm #jordanxiii

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Wayne Barrow, Biggie’s former manager, was in attendance for one purpose: celebrating the life and death of Biggie. Alongside James Cruz, the President of Bad Boy and Diddy’s manager, both list this specific piece of Big with the World Trade Center as their favorite. Wayne explains, “It represents New York in a real way. That’s the New York we know.”

Unreleased photo of #Biggie ?????? #SXSW

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Wayne Burrow describes this 20 year anniversary of Biggie’s death as “very emotional and very charging” before turning it into a positive note. He explains, “We were able to bring the entire family back together. For something that we felt was important, not just for the family, but the culture of Hip Hop.”

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This lead to a conversation on the direction Hip Hop has taken since the 90s.

“It’s evolved in its own right. I can’t knock what these kids are doing today. A lot of them weren’t even born in the 90s where we come from. I think that these kids are a lot more. . . they see things from a different lens. At the end of the day, for me, I’m a purist when it comes to Hip Hop. It’s about lyricism. It’s about style. It’s about pizzazz. It’s a lifestyle. I think that the lifestyle that we created for them, gave them the opportunity to do what they’re doing today. It’s different, it’s very different. But you gotta respect what they’re doing.”

He proceeded to list J. Cole, Kendrick, Drake, and Big Sean as his “nuances of what’s hot today.”

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Speaking on the thoughts of the current rap beefs, which include Nicki Minaj/Remy Ma and Chris Brown/Soulja Boy, Wayne had some things to say.

“That ain’t beef. That’s not beef.”

DX asked if he was laughing at the matter, to which he responds, “It’s not humorous. I think that there’s a lot of egos out here that’s been existing forever. Given to what happened to Pac and Big alone, just their deaths and what it meant to the culture, I think that people need to pay attention to the fact that there’s more out here than just beefing about petty shit. That don’t fucking matter. People losing their lives over dumb shit like this every day. If we’re going to move the culture forward, we gotta do so in a positive way.”

What’s Beef?: When you need to gats to go to sleep or when you roll no less than 30 deep?

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He ended with a shout out to Puff and the Bad Boy family, stating, “We’re doing it for ya’ll. It’s all about the people. We appreciate the love.”