Christopher Wallace Aka Notorious BIG Biggie Smalls Big Poppa Biggie Frank White Frankie Baby

Parish Leasane Crooks Tupac Amaru Shakur Aka 2Pac Pac Makaveli

James Marshall Jimi Hendrix

Cory Lidle

Christopher George Latore Wallace (May 21, 1972 – March 9, 1997), also known as Biggie Smalls (after a stylish gangster in 1975s Let's Do it Again) , Big Poppa and Frank White (from the film King of New York), but best known as The Notorious B.I.G (Business Instead of Game), was a very popular rapper who rose to fame during the mid-1990s.

Born in Brooklyn, Christopher Wallace was raised at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980's. By the time his critically acclaimed album Ready to Die was released in 1994, he became the central figure of East Coast hip-hop, reviving New York into a hip-hop scene which had previously been focused on West Coast hip-hop. Biggie's double disc set, Life After Death, sold over 10 million copies and is the second best-selling hip-hop album of all time.[1] Biggie was noted for his storytelling, freestyling, and his easy to understand yet complex lyrics. He is also one of the pioneers of memorizing lyrics. His career was dominated by the Bad Boy/Death Row Records feud during his life, but following his death, Biggie has been celebrated as one of the all time greatest hip-hop artists.[2]

Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rap artist, actor, activist, and poet. He was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling rap/hip-hop artist ever, having sold over 73 million albums worldwide,[2] including over 44.5 million sales in the United States alone.[3] Most of Shakur's songs are about growing up around violence and hardship in ghettos, racism, and sometimes his feuds with fellow rappers. Tupac is known for the political, economic, and racial equality messages in a lot of his work. He has been ranked by many fans, critics, and industry insiders as the greatest rapper ever.[4][5]

Born in New York City, Tupac frequently found his family changing place of residence. In 1988, his family moved to California, where he would reside for the rest of his life. In 1990, he was hired as a backup dancer for the alternative rap group Digital Underground. Tupac's debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, gained critical recognition and backlash for its controversial lyrics. Shakur became the target of various lawsuits and experienced legal troubles most notably, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in 1993 (although he vigorously denied the claims). The day before the guilty verdict was issued, Shakur was shot five times in a recording studio lobby in Manhattan. Following the incident, Shakur grew suspicious that other rappers were involved in his shooting; the controversy would help spark the later East Coast-West Coast feud. After serving eleven months of his sentence, Shakur was bailed from prison by Marion "Suge" Knight, the CEO of Death Row Records. In exchange, Shakur would release three records under the label, his fifth, double disc album All Eyez on Me counting as two. On September 7, 1996, Tupac was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. On September 13, 1996, six days after the shooting, Tupac died of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest at the University Medical Center in Las Vegas.

Tupac's music addresses such topics as the hardships of growing up around violence in United States ghettos, poverty, racism, and his feuds with fellow rappers. He is known for the messages of political, economic, and racial equality that pervade his work as well as the "Thug Life" that he raps about living in. His music has attracted a large amount of controversy and was showcased in the media a number of times. He has gained a large amount of publicity for being one of the main figures in the East Coast vs. West Coast feud between his Death Row Records label and Bad Boy Records. During his lifetime, Tupac released five albums and played roles in several films. Many posthumous albums have been released under Shakur's name.

Cory Fulton Lidle (March 22, 1972 – October 11, 2006) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball. He played for seven different teams in his nine-season career, last playing for the New York Yankees.[1] Only four days after the Yankees were eliminated from the 2006 postseason, the 34-year-old Lidle was killed when the small aircraft he owned crashed

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Widely hailed by music fans and critics alike, Hendrix is considered to be one of the most influential electric guitarists in rock music history. He achieved worldwide fame in 1967 playing at the Monterey Pop Festival, then headlined the iconic 1969 Woodstock Festival before his sudden death in 1970, at the age of 27.

Elvis Aron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), often known simply as Elvis and also called "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" or simply "The King", was an American singer, musician and actor. He remains a pop icon and is regarded by some to be the most important, original entertainer of the last fifty years. There is little doubt that Presley is the most talked about and written about performer of the 20th Century. (Presley's birth certificate uses the spelling Aron, but his estate has designated Aaron as the official spelling of his middle name. It is spelled Aron because of his twin brother that died at birth, Garon, so Elvis would always have a part of his brother with him.)

Kurt Cobain From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. April 5, 1994) was the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the Seattle-based rock band Nirvana. He served not only as the band's frontman and principal songwriter, but also as its "leader and spiritual center."[1] With the band's success, Cobain became a major national and international celebrity, an uncomfortable position for a man who once said, "Famous is the last thing I wanted to be."[2] Cobain and Nirvana helped reshape popular music in the 1990s. In 1991, the arrival of Nirvana's hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" marked the beginning of a dramatic shift of popular rock music away from the dominant genres of the 1980s (glam metal, arena rock, and dance-pop) and toward grunge and alternative rock. The music media eventually awarded the song "anthem-of-a-generation" status,[3] and, with it, Cobain ascended as the reluctant "spokesman" for Generation X. Other hit songs written by Cobain include "Come as You Are", "Lithium", "In Bloom", "Heart-Shaped Box", "All Apologies", and "About a Girl". During the last years of his life, Cobain struggled with drug addiction and the media pressures surrounding him and his wife Courtney Love. On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead in his home. His death was officially ruled a suicide by self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. Since then, the circumstances surrounding his death have fueled much analysis and debate. Biography Cobain was born to Donald and Wendy Cobain on February 20, 1967 in the Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington and spent his first six months living in Hoquiam,