New York City's city council voted to honor hip-hop legend Biggie Smalls in his home borough of Brooklyn.
Rolling Stone reports the metropolis' council voted unanimously (48-0) to create a Christopher Wallace Way in Brooklyn as well as a Wu-Tang Clan District in Staten Island last Friday.
"It's undeniable that Biggie Smalls is perhaps the most internationally renowned figure coming out of Brooklyn, New York," Councilperson Laurie Cumbo, who represents much of Brooklyn, said. "He has left his print on the borough of Brooklyn, New York."
New York-based cultural activist LeRoy McCarty has long pushed for official city recognition of hip-hop luminaries.
“I’m happy that NYC officials are finally giving the city’s indigenous hip hop music the respect and recognition that it deserves," he told Gothamist.
Biggie's name will go on the Brooklyn street on which he grew up, currently known as St. James Place. The future Christopher Wallace Way sits between Fulton Street and Gates Avenue.
Wu-Tang Clan District will be located in a currently nameless section of Staten Island, just southeast of Vanderbilt Avenue and Targee Street. The Wu famously dubbed the island "Shaolin." The borough and the mythology the WTC built up around the island featured heavily in their music.
The memorializations won't mark the first time New York has acknowledged its role as the cradle of hip-hop. As NY1 reports, in 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio renamed part of Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx “Hip Hop Boulevard.” The name change honored the legendary DJ Kool Herc, whose party at 1520 Sedgwick in 1973 is believed to be the literal birthplace of hip-hop.
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