Touré hopped on TikTok to clarify the timeline regarding a clip from his New York Times interview with The Notorious B.I.G. that was used in Netflix’s Sean Combs: The Reckoning docuseries.
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In the scenes playing out Biggie’s final hours, an interview clip of the Brooklyn rapper speaking about the intense paranoia, fear for his life and pressures from the outside plays.
Touré clarified in his TikTok that the interview he conducted was actually from 1994 surrounding Ready to Die, which would be more than two years before B.I.G. was murdered in March 1997 while in Los Angeles.
“So I did that interview, he’s talking to me,” the journalist explained. “The doc places this right before the Peterson Auto Museum, March 9. But you know what? We did that interview on the first album. That’s him talking about the street, not the [rap] game. That’s him saying, ‘I’m afraid of getting knocked off on the street.”
Touré continued: “If anyone started walking up, somebody from the crew would go down with a hammer. B.I.G. said to me, ‘I am afraid, afraid of the street. But I gotta be out here. I gotta live. I gotta show ‘em my music. I gotta show ‘em I’m not afraid, but I am definitely afraid.’”
The journalist believes the Netflix doc caused confusion with its placement of the interview, while Biggie was actually referring to the dangers of the Brooklyn streets in the early days of his rap fame and not mounting tensions between the East Coast and West Coast.
“But the doc makes it like that bite about his fear relates to the Big-Pac situation and his fear ahead of going to L.A.,” Touré added. “He may have been afraid because he knew he was in danger of being in L.A. in that moment, but that clip is way out of context. It’s from years earlier.”
Billboard has reached out to Netflix for comment.
Biggie was killed in a 1997 drive-by shooting after leaving a VIBE afterparty during the early hours of March 9 in Los Angeles, the night after the Soul Train Awards.
The Reckoning alleges that Diddy canceled a planned flight for B.I.G. to the U.K. to promote Life After Death, and kept the late rapper on the West Coast amid tensions boiling.
A day before docuseries’ Dec. 2 premiere, the embattled mogul’s team sent a cease-and-desist to the streamer, with a statement calling the project a “shameful hit piece” and for “ripping private footage out of context.” Netflix denied those allegations.
