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The New York Times spoke with Joe Long, the owner of Birdell's, a record store that's located on Nostrand Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He says that when rap began, he resisted putting it in his store. He finally relented after two years.

Over that period I got to know Biggie Smalls. He was just hanging out at the barber shop, used to party over there up on St. James Place. He used to come down to the store and say, “Birdell, I want you to help me get beats, tracks, ’cause I know you know them old blues and the good music.” I said: “Aw, Biggie, I don’t have time for that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Get you a record player and I’ll let you go downstairs in the basement.”

So he and his partner would come every day three or four months straight, every day but Saturdays, and he would say, “I’m going to be big one day, Birdell.” I said, “Aw, you ain’t going to be nothing.”