Where Brooklyn at?
A basketball court at a Brooklyn playground will be named after late rapper Notorious B.I.G., according to a city councilman who has tried to honor the hip hop star for years.
City Councilman Robert Cornegy said he will finally fulfill his promise to the rapper’s mother, Voletta Wallace, when he cuts the ribbon next month on the blacktop at Crispus Attucks Playground on Fulton St. and Classon Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“This honor is very personal to me,” Cornegy said. “Twenty years later, this comes full circle, this renaming of the basketball courts in his honor.”
The rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, used to play basketball on the court before he shot to fame with such hits as “Juicy,” “Big Poppa” and “What’s Beef.”
Cornegy said the renaming ceremony will take place Aug. 1 or Aug. 2 ahead of an annual Aug. 5 basketball tournament held in Biggie’s honor.
In 2013, Cornegy tried to get a portion of St. James Place named after Wallace, but ran into opposition from residents who opposed the honor because of Biggie’s violent lyrics and his drug-dealing past.
“We lived in the same building at 226 St. James Place in Brooklyn,” Cornegy said. “We lived in 1R and Biggie and his mother lived in 3R. So when he passed his mother made me her director. I promised to keep his name honored.”
Biggie was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles March 9, 1997 hours after the Soul Train Music Awards.
