EXCLUSIVE: Tichina Arnold Remembers The Notorious B.I.G. [Video]
Actress Tichina Arnold was blessed to meet the late Notorious B.I.G. in 1995 when he made a cameo on an episode of Martin during the beloved sitcom’s 4th season. The woman many still affectionately refer to as “Pam from Martin” remembers meeting Brooklyn’s finest MC.
“Working with Biggie was amazing because we never really saw Martin [Lawrence] excited about anybody that came to the set, other than Biggie,” Tichina told HipHopWired. “And when Biggie was coming to the set we just made sure all of was on good behavior [laughs]. I remember he had just been in a car accident; something had happened and he had a cane.”
Although Biggie Smalls is known for his way with words, Tichina was just as impressed by his presence.
“When I walked on the set he was sitting there, he was like, ‘Yo, whoa, hey,’ and I was like, ‘Yo what’s up Biggie!,’” she recalls. “And that’s kind of what came about in the script. What we do on Martin is they kind of wrote the script according to what really happened. And Biggie was so cool and his aura, his whole presence was…it was like a Godfather kind of presence, it really was. He was very gracious and really, really even toned, very quiet, he didn’t talk a whole lot. But he was very observant and very appreciative of being there and we all had an amazing time. I’m just so happy to have been in his presence.”
Speaking on Biggie’s continued importance to Hip-Hop, Tichina feels Hip-Hop music just hasn’t been the same since Frank White was murdered in 1997.
“Relevance, it all depends upon what was told,” explains Tichina. “There’s so many stories to be told. I try to explain to my daughter, rap wasn’t about whose the s*xiest. Rap was how we found out what happened in each other’s hoods. I was in Queens, they were in Brooklyn, somebody else was in the Bronx, so the rappers were the storytellers, they were the poets. Biggie was kind of the end of that era. He opened us up to what his life was and how it was. He was the last of a dying breed unfortunately. I always say things come full circle but to me rap as an art. It’s an art and not everybody can do it. A lot of people think they can do it, but they can’t.”
Tichina Arnold can currently be seen playing “Judy” on TV Land’s ‘Happily Divorced.‘
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