112 Had an Unforgettable Studio Experience With The Notorious B.I.G.
R&B group 112 rose to fame in the 1990s after signing with Sean “Diddy” Combs’ record label, Bad Boy Records. At the time, The Notorious B.I.G. was Bad Boy’s biggest signee. So when 112 crossed paths with Biggie, the young singers took in every second with the rap legend.
112 had a different image than The Notorious B.I.G.
In a 2017 interview on The Breakfast Club, 112 members Marvin “Slim” Scandrick, Michael “Mike” Smith, Quinnes “Q” Parker, and Daron Jones looked back on the early days of their career after signing with Diddy. As young singers still finishing up high school in Atlanta, the group members didn’t partake in the drinking and drugs that the music industry often entails.
“They knew 12 didn’t smoke. We were considered the gentlemen of R&B,” Mike said. “We were Southern; we are Southern … so they knew that we didn’t cuss, we didn’t drink, we didn’t do any drugs or any things like that. We were just those ‘good guys.’ So they tried to keep all the ‘bad stuff’ away from 12.”
112 and Biggie had a good relationship
Mike went on to tell a story about when they first met Biggie. It was in 1994, and they met each other at a studio, with none other than Biggie’s Brooklyn neighbor and future rap superstar Jay-Z. Biggie was recording “I Got a Story to Tell,” which would end up on his second and final album Life After Death.
“One day we had a session and we went into it and Puff was like, ‘Yo, Big’s in the other room, so let’s go holler at him.’ But he’s like, ‘Yo, but they’re in there blazing, B!’ So we were like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna go in anyway,'” Mike remembered.
“[We] went in there — couldn’t see anybody,” he laughed. “And Big is sitting there, and this is a testament to how great this dude was. He spoke to everybody or whatever, but he was just sitting there. [Lil] Cease is over here, Jigga was on the other side.”
“This was like ’94,” he explained. “So we go in, and he’s said, ‘Yo, 12, what up?’ Not saying anything for hours. 4 o’clock, 4 A.M. rolls around, dude gets up [and] is like, ‘I’m ready.’ They were like, ‘You ready for what?’ And he just went in and did ‘I Got a Story To Tell.’ Because if you remember in there: ‘I got my 112 CD.’ It’s because he saw us in there. We spoke to him, and we was in there just kicking it with him.”
He then explained how “I Got a Story To Tell” came at a pivotal point in Biggie’s career following the success of his debut album Ready to Die and the escalating East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop battle. “He’s watching this whole narrative go down in front of him and everybody is just talking all these stories, and he’s just taking this whole experience in, making it into a story, went in there, wrote it, and that’s the kind of relationship that he had with us, man,” Mike said. “Dude was our biggest supporter on Bad Boy.”
Biggie was like a big brother to 112
Slim went on to speak about his experience with Biggie.
“What I loved the most about Big is, [with] us being the little brothers on the label, he always made sure we had whatever we needed,” he said. He recounted times when they would see each other in the studio and Biggie would ask if they’d eaten that day. “I remember sometimes, man, he’d just break out $100 [bills] and just giving [to] every last one of us.”
