"Giving ends to my friends and it feels stupendous / tremendous cream, fcuk a dollar and a dream. / living better now, Coogi sweater now / drop-top BMs, I'm the man, girlfriend".

These are some of the lines from Biggie Smalls / Notorious B.I.G.'s song Big Poppa, first released in 1994.

You can have a conversation with most people who are vaguely into rap music and start by saying "giving ends to my friends and..." and they'll instantly know to reply "...and it feels stupendous. Tremendous cream. Fcuk a dollar and a dream."

Born in Brooklyn, NYC in 1972, Christopher Wallace is best known by his stage names Notorious B.I.G. or Biggle Smalls. But most people simply call it him 'Biggie'.

Back in the 1990s, he was making headlines for all the good reasons, ie. his music, and unfortunately for the wrong reasons as well, when the 'beef' between him and his old friend turned rival Tupac was at its peak, eventually resulting in the violent death of both in the span of seven months.

I'm talking about Biggie A, because I was listening to Big Poppa as we speak - pardon me, I mean as I write - and B, because an NFT marketplace called OneOf has teamed up with The Notorius B.I.G. Estate to release a collection of NFT dubbed 'The Sky's the Limit'.

This is exciting. But what's even more exciting is the fact that, for once, the NFT collection serves more than one purpose and it isn't just a sequence of 'expensive JPEGs', as some people might say.

In addition to the digital images, fans can also license audio recordings of Biggie's 'Fulton Street Freestyle' in the form of an NFT.

Young Christopher Wallace was just a 17-year-old wannabe rapper when he was filmed in Brooklyn 17 'spitting' this freestyle in Fulton Street.

After that, Biggie's career took off quite quickly in just a few years later he was already a superstar but even though that clip had become iconic, the record has never been officially released. Until now, that is.

In simple terms, one of the use cases for NFTs is they could be used to manage music licensing and performing rights, making the whole process a lot less bureaucratic and easier.

This is a game-changing move and potentially a world's first, allowing musicians to attain the licensing to use Biggie's freestyle on their own soundtrick provided they have the NFT to prove ownership of the rights to the song.

The collection drops on July 26.

I've crossposted this story on Bitcoinea.