Go B.I.G. Or Go Home.

CHRIS LIVE AKA SHAKER SAYS: As I stand Raf Simons booted on the precipice of yet another glorious birthday I still find it hard to believe that it has indeed been 15 years since the world was robbed of the late, great Notorious B.I.G. Equally staggering is the landscape of Hip Hop 2012 - a musical map dotted with constant reminders that we may never fully recover from the combined loss of both Christopher Wallace and his complicated contemporary Tupac Shakur.

For fly individuals such as myself, an aerial view of today's Hip Hop field quickly reveals a cold-to-the-touch cultural climate bearing all the hypothetical effects of a Nuclear Winter scenario where our collective subjective theories of truth are severely clouded by mediocrity, promising talents are covered in cynical soot and ambitions wilt away in remote corporate created pigeon holes deprived of sunlight.

Yes, to quote Biggie, "Things Done Changed". However, bleak descriptions aside, I remain an eternal optimist, so amongst the wreckage of lonely non-wrecked microphones, I still see hope! When people insist that we "Think B.I.G." today, I agree ... we must ALL truly think big. Better it that we take the bitter lemons that we were given when the original "true player for real" passed and enjoy Hennessy® spiked lemonade in his Coogi-laced memory than to stubbornly succumb to sour-pussed artistic dehydration. Biggie's catalogue has survived the true death and is a living, breathing testament to his conceptual genius all these many years later. Appreciate it.

On this, the 15th the anniversary of his assassination, I invite Y.O.U. to do all that Y.O.U. can to keep this man's legacy alive and well. Never stop dreaming of new "Lear jets and coupes" the mesmerizing way that "Salt "Shoops" and how to sell records like Snoop" ... lol. Continue to look to his awesome body of work for inspiration and motivation ... I know that I still do. #RIPBIG Think B.I.G.