What took so long? A Brooklyn playground will be getting renamed after the late, great Notorious B.I.G.
The New York Daily News reports that City Councilman Robert Cornegy plans to cut the ribbon in a formal ceremony at the Crispus Attucks Playground on Fulton St. and Classon Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, BK.
“This honor is very personal to me,” Cornegy, who promised Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace, he would make the honor happen. “Twenty years later, this comes full circle, this renaming of the basketball courts in his honor.”
The ceremony is scheduled to go down in early August, just before the start of an annual basketball tournament at the park held in B.I’G.’s honor.
Of course, as for what took so long, there was bound to be a hater.
Reports DNAInfo New York:
The approval by the Parks Department comes after a contentious debate at Community Board 2, at which detractors argued that Biggie’s lyrics about drug dealing and violence and disparaging comments about women made him an unfit role model for the young people who play at the court.
“When we name something, we’re saying this is somebody we should respect or want to emulate,” said Lucy Koteen, who arrived at the June 19 meeting with fliers printed with lyrics she found objectionable. “Would we name it Al Capone Basketball Court? Would we name it after Bernie Madoff?”
Koteen, a former public member of the board’s Transportation Committee, in 2013 opposed the renaming of the corner of St. James Place and Fulton Street “Christopher Wallace Way” because the rapper was “too fat.”
Oh well, Koteen can now kick all the rocks.
Rest in power Christopher Wallace aka The Notorious B.I.G.
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Photo: WENN.com
