The last reporter to interview rap star Notorious B.I.G. before his death, Stanford alumnus Cheo Hodari Coker, Class of ’94, spoke at the Stanford Bookstore on Friday about his new Notorious B.I.G biography, his experiences in journalism and the contemporary hip-hop scene.

“Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G.” is a look at the life and times of Christopher Wallace, an honors student who dropped out of school to sell drugs and eventually became the rapper known to all as the Notorious B.I.G. In preparation for the book, Coker spoke to family and friends of Biggie and gathered never-before- seen photographs.

“B.I.G. was the one person, where through his life you could explore the history of hip-hop,” Coker said. “When you look at his art, its more than just a gangsta rap record, it is about Reagan-omics and drug use in the ’80s, and how that affected the content of hip-hop.”

As for why he wrote his book about Biggie, Coker said, “One reason I picked Biggie is because, born 1972, he’s a member of the last generation of people who remember a time when hip-hop didn’t exist. Nowadays you take for granted how much music is around and how easy it is to get to.”

The second reason Coker chose his subject was more personal. Coker first interviewed Biggie on Sept 27, 1994 for Spin Magazine.

“It was two weeks after the release of ‘Ready to Die,’ and even there I had a sense that he was going to be someone who was important,” Coker said.

Coker said he chose the title of the book because he found the Notorious B.I.G.’s life truly unbelievable. “Unbelievable” was also one of the hit songs on Biggie’s first album.

“I wanted to pick a title that would appeal to people who had no interest in hip-hop whatsoever,” Coker said. “Random House wanted me to name it ‘B.I.G.,’ but that’s unimaginative.”

Whether he is interviewing hip-hop artists or marketing his book, Coker does feel the stretch between a Stanford education and the streets of the Bronx.

“The first thing I learned from dealing with various gang members — and I’ve interviewed a lot of people — is that they spot a fake a mile away,” Coker said. “They have more respect if you come in a suit and tie and use your proper English.”

Joking about Ebonics, Coker said, “You don’t want too much slang. I don’t want to read the way I talk. I wanted to write stuff that my grandfather and college professors could read and understand, but I also wanted the artist to say ‘he got it right.’ ”

Coker was at the Four Seasons and interviewed Biggie following the taping of his music video “Hypnotized.” This was his last interview with the rap star. Their next scheduled meeting was in March of the same year following the Soul Train Awards. Coker said he called Biggie several times on the night of his death but to no avail.

“If he had called me back, I would have been in the car with him when he got shot,” Coker said. “Because the story was due Monday and I was doing a cover, I’d follow him around. The next morning my associate editor called me up, and asked me, ‘Is it true?’ Once I found out I didn’t sleep for 48 hours.”

“Unbelievable” is not the first book written about the Notorious B.I.G.’s death.

“The problem I had with both books was that neither seemed concerned with who Christopher Wallace was, a lot of people knew who the guy in the bowler hat was,” Coker said. “Since I interviewed Biggie so many different times, I got to know who he was.”

Coker said that he wanted to paint an accurate portrayal of the rap star.

“I wanted to show who it is he was, but not shy away from the Biggie who pulled guns, smoked weed and had more girls than any man should,” he added. “But when he got big, he was not only able to have music change his life, he brought in the people from the corner and showed them that instead of risking your life for $20,000, I can get you $20,000 a show.”

Coker has his own theories on the rap star’s sudden death.

“It wasn’t the drug game that got Biggie killed” he said. “If he were still a drug dealer, he might be alive. It was the music industry. It was a lot of the controversies and the back and forth between Shug Night and Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs.”

Coker said that his book is not finished and that he could see himself revising it and adding to it as new details about Biggie emerge.

“This book also represents my tumultuous love of hip-hop,” he said. “I go through highs and lows, but every now and then an album will come by and I will think, ‘Why would I stop writing about hip-hop?’ I want to write about this for the rest of my life and teach about it.”

Coker, told the audience, “Everything started for me here. It’s weird to be up here at the podium in a suit, cause I was always the guy with the baggy jeans and hoodie, rocking out.”

He added, “I used to go to the second floor of the Bookstore where the magazine rack was and read and dream about writing for the magazines.”

In 1991, Coker began writing for The Stanford Daily.

“It was something about seeing my stuff in print that set off an interest in me,” he said.

Coker’s first Daily article — which ran on Oct. 3, 1991 — was a reply to an album review in De La Soul magazine. Apparently Coker had ranted about the review long enough that his editor took action.

“Finally my editor told me, stop talking about it and just do something about it,” he said. “So I did. It just became this thing I wanted to do, I started to write more and more and more.”

Writing for The Daily wasn’t enough for Coker’s high ambitions. During his sophomore year, Maynard Parker — then editor in chief of Newsweek — came to The Daily and handpicked interns, and Coker was among them.

“With this intern job, I found that if you wanted to talk to people like Public Enemy or Ice Cube they would do phone interviews and press,” Coker said. “So I began as if I was already writing for the places I wanted to write for like Rolling Stone.”

By his junior year Coker had published pieces in local rap pages, and by February of his senior year, he got to do a cover on his idol Ice Cube. Coker now writes primarily for Vibe Magazine, though his work has been featured in Premiere Magazine and The Los Angeles Times as well.

Coker asked the Stanford audience in attendance to consider hip-hop as a worthy topic of academic study.

“We’ve only touched the surface of studying at the college level,” Coker said. “I think it’s an important art form that touches more than blacks and Latinos, it touches the entire world.”

Coker continued, “When we study hip-hop culture, I think theory is a good start, but we need to look at other aspects such as socioeconomics and explore how budget cuts and the lack of music programs in schools gave birth to this culture. This creativity among kids wasn’t lost. They learned how to make a turntable an instrument.”