In August 1994, Biggie released “Juicy,” the first single on his debut album Ready to Die. One of the conspirators in the 1993 attack was a middle-aged African-American convert named Clement Rodney Hampton-El, a medical technician and former mujahid in Afghanistan. Biggie, who had started dealing crack at 15 in the neighborhood before committing to rap, was likely aware of this community. Congregants armed with knives and pistols operated 24-hour anti-drug patrols. In 1988, Masjid At-Taqwa, a mosque popular with African-American converts, coordinated with police to eject dealers from a dozen local crack dens. Smoke from the World Trade Center was visible from Fulton Street in his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where he later shot parts of the “Juicy” music video.īedford-Stuyvesant was also home to several mosques and a growing community of African-American converts to Islam. He was well placed to observe the 1993 bombing and its aftermath. But at the time, most Americans viewed the World Trade Center attack as an isolated incident, and even New Yorkers’ attention soon drifted to more pressing issues – rampant crime, racial tensions and squeegee men.Ī few miles away in Brooklyn, Christopher “ Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace was rising through the city’s hip-hop underground. Historians now consider the bombing the first salvo in a two-decade (and counting) global jihadist offensive against the West.

The attackers were Islamic radicals inspired by Omar Abdel-Rahman, an influential Egyptian sheikh who had recently moved to the United States. The blast killed six people, including a pregnant woman, and tore a 100-foot-deep crater in the garage. America’s war on terror may have begun on September 11, 2001, but the roots of this mystery lead to a snowy morning 24 years ago.Īt 12:18 pm on February 26, 1993, a rented Ford Econoline carrying a 1,200-pound bomb exploded in the parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Psychologists even posit that it may be warping our historical memory.ĭiscovering how the lyric was cut – and why that edit persists – requires delving into the past. For the rapper’s devotees, the edit fuels recriminations and frustration. Among 9/11 truthers, it fuels conspiracy theories that Biggie predicted the attack – or perhaps even helped plan it. But for a sub-set of listeners, the edit has become an obsession. In the era of Spotify and iTunes, the ongoing censorship has slipped past the radars of many Biggie fans since the original is available so readily via streaming. Today, radio listeners still hear 1.5 seconds of eerie silence where the last rhyme once rang.

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