Lance “Un” Rivera has reflected on the time the late Notorious B.I.G. recorded Life After Death track “You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)” in honor of his former friend and rival 2Pac.
During his conversation with VladTV, the music executive shared his thoughts on the infamous East Coast-West Coast hip-hop rivalry that dominated the mid-’90s, and according to Rivera, 2Pac came to him in a dream after he died with lyrics that ended up on Biggie’s song
“I was sleeping, and 2Pac, I guess he came into a dream that I was having,” Rivera said. “I heard some lyrics in that dream, and I told Big what those lyrics were. I said, ‘Yo listen to this, I was thinking about 2Pac,’ and I said, ‘You’re nobody until somebody kills you.'”
Rivera continued to say that Biggie had a habit of picking up things people would say around him and actually using them in a song. What Rivera said to the late Bad Boy rapper stuck with him and led to one of the standout songs on Life After Death.
“One day, I came to the studio, and he was like, ‘Yo play that song for Un,’ and he played that song for me, and it sent chills down my body,” Rivera said. “Like it fit so perfectly, you know, at the time. It was like poetic justice in a sense, you know, where it’s art imitating life when it came to [Biggie]. It’s like ok, where do we go from here? [Biggie] was distraught because they never mended.”
Elsewhere during his interview, Rivera explained Big had called his wife Faith Evans once he got the news that 2Pac passed away in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Biggie never wanted any harm done in his beef with Pac, and he was ultimately shook that something could possibly happen to him with how serious the coastal beef had already gotten.
Unfortunately, Biggie Smalls was killed six months after Pac’s death. The Brooklyn native suffered the same fate as being shot and killed in a drive-by but this time in Los Angeles, California.
