Rap at auction: Biggie’s crown and Tupac Shakur letters
NEW YORK » Rivals in life, the rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur are being united for an auction at Sotheby’s, the first-ever dedicated hip-hop auction at a major international auction house.
Bidders will be able to vie for the crown worn and signed by the Notorious B.I.G. during a 1997 photo shoot three days before he was killed in Los Angeles. They’ll also get to bid on an archive of 22 love letters written by Shakur at the age of 15-17 to a high school sweetheart.
The auction will be held Sept. 15 at Sotheby’s in New York City and features over 120 hip-hop-related lots. The exhibition will be available to the public online via its digital gallery.
“The impact of hip-hop is everywhere — sneakers, clothing, jewelry, art, music. I wanted to have a sale that really recognized how massive that impact really is,” said Cassandra Hatton, the Sotheby’s senior specialist who organized the sale.
The estimates for the headlining lots — $200,000 to $300,000 for the crown and $60,000 to $80,000 for the letters — are low, with the hope that the auction house can attract first-time bidders and show it is not just a stuffy place for multimillion-dollar watches and paintings.
Onetime friends who became rivals in a hype-fueled war between the East and West Coast rap scenes, Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. — also known as Biggie
Smalls — were gunned down within months of each other. Both crimes remain unsolved.