How Biggie changed hip-hop

For the premier of the new Notorious B.I.G. movie, Slate has an article on the influence of Biggie on hip-hop. It's worth the read if you loved his stuff:

B.I.G. was the most earthbound and unpretentious of great rappers. He was a formalist, obsessed with rhyme schemes and punch lines and narrative details—the intimations of death in his raps weren't prophecies, they were plot points. Like many gangsta rappers, he reveled in hard-boiled sentimentality, but the melodrama was usually undercut by jokes.