The balance of the great pun speaks for itself. His career as a rapper is an indispensable part of the rap game and the larger hip-hop culture. By 1997, the rapper was already a big name in the underground rap scene and had already made some high-profile features for the projects of big names like Fat Joe, The Beatnuts, and Flesh-N-Bone. In the same year, he finally signed his first professional record deal with Loud Records.
Big Pun holds the record as the first Latin American presenter ever to receive platinum certification for a solo project. His lyrical agility and his multi-syllabic rhyming style earned him praise from many sides. In the years since his death, publications and networks such as About.com, MTV2, and The Source have named him on their respective lists and profiled the greatest rappers of all time. One can only wonder what he would have reached if his life had not been shortened.
Who is Big Pun? Bio, Age
The 90s rapper Christopher Rios Lee was born on November 10, 1971, in the Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican parents. The presenter, who is said to have had at least three siblings, had a difficult childhood. As a teenager, he tried basketball and boxing but seemed to make no progress in either area. When he turned 15, Big Pun moved out of his mother’s house. At some point in the late 1980s, Christopher was homeless and struggled with depression due to his childhood experiences.
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He had suffered a leg injury at the age of 5 while playing in a city park. As a result, the city offered him a substantial settlement. With this money, he married Liza, his high school sweetheart. They moved into a house together, but it didn’t work out.
However, unlike most people, food was the drug of choice for him to cope with. By the time Rios was 21, he had more than doubled his weight from 180 pounds at age 18 to 300 pounds. As a result, the young man could no longer tie his own shoes.
Big Pun ventured into rap when he started writing lyrics in the mid-80s. Under the name Big Moon Dawg, he and three other friends formed a rap group called Full-A-Clips: Joker Jamz, Toom, and Lyrical Assassin. The group recorded a number of unreleased songs in the early 90s.
Christopher, who had changed his stage name to Big Punisher, met the rapper, Fat Joe. The two men made an instant friendship because of their similarities; they both lived in the Bronx and were both from Puerto Rico. In 1995 he was featured on Fat Joe’s second album Jealous One’s Envy. This collaboration brought him some much-needed commercial attention. In the following two years, he worked on albums by The Beatnuts (Stone Crazy) and Flesh-N-Bones (T.H.U.G.S.). He also debuted his first “I’m Not a Player”, which became a huge underground hit, culminating in number 57 on the Billboard 100.
After signing a record deal with Loud Records, Big Pun released his debut album Capital Punishment in 1998. It was a huge success. The album was nominated for a Grammy and peaked at number 5 on the Billboard 200, eventually going on to go platinum.
Pun’s enduring relationship with Fat Joe led to him becoming part of the rapper’s moderator stable. The rap group was known as Terror Squad and released their first project in 1999 with the creative title The Album. The idea behind the group’s success was to launch the solo careers of all its members, most of whom came from Big Pun’s previous group, The Full-A-Clips. The album received positive reviews, but commercially it was not very successful.
Big Pun Weight Problem
In the midst of all this success, Christopher’s demons were still haunting him. His weight had become a serious problem even among his friends. At some point in his early twenties, he alternated between obese and morbidly obese. He enrolled in a weight loss program at Duke University. The program helped him lose about 80 lbs (36 kg). Unfortunately, the rapper dropped out of the program early and gained weight again.
Death and Posthumous Achievements
The rapper was to appear on February 5, 2000, in an episode of Saturday Night Live alongside his friend Fat Joe and singer Jennifer Lopez. However, he fell ill and had to resign from the planned gig. Two days later he suffered a heart attack and respiratory failure while spending time with his family. He was immediately taken to hospital, but it turned out to be too late for him, as the sanitary
The great “Christopher” Pun was working on his follow-up album at the time of his death. Two months after his death, the album entitled “Yeeeah Baby” was released with great success. It reached number 3 in the Billboard charts and was awarded gold three months after its release. One year later the album Endangered Species was released. It was a compilation of the rapper’s best songs, some of his unreleased works, and remixes of his best verses and features. Endangered Species reached its peak at number 7 of the Billboard 200.
There were also the duets: the album Final Chapter, which featured Big Pun, Fat Joe, and Notorious B.I.G.
In May 2001 there were plans to rename a city lot in honor of Big Pun, but New York City Council stopped the plans on the grounds that the rapper’s lyrics were unappetizing because of the profanity and vices he was encouraged to commit. In 2009, a tribute documentary entitled Big Pun was shot and released: The Legacy.
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Big Pun’s Wife, Son (Chris Rivers)
The presenter from the Bronx had married his long-time girlfriend Liza in his late teenage years. Together they had given birth to three children. The first child, Amanda, was born in 1991. The second child, Vanessa, was born in 1993 and Christopher Jr. followed in 1994.
Christopher Jr., better known as Chris Rivers, began his music career in 2002, two years after Big Pun’s death. Under the name Baby Pun, he was part of a short-lived group called 3 Down. Under the name Chris Rivers, he took his rap career seriously from the age of eighteen and has released over six projects. Rivers, whose style is said to be similar to his father’s, has worked with names like Joell Ortiz, Chino XL, and the Wu-Tang Clan.
Four years after Big Pun passed away, Liza put his custom-made Terror Squad medal up for auction on eBay. She revealed that she was in financial trouble and was not receiving royalties from his album sales.
Height
During his lifetime, and even in death, the weight of Emcees was for a long time a topic of discussion that eclipsed all other statements about his body. The rapper stood at a height of 5 feet 7 inches (1.71 m).