He was too “Biggie” to be honored.
Naming a Brooklyn street corner after the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls, would send a bad message to kids because he was obese, among other reasons, a Clinton Hill community leader claims.
“Physically, the man is not exactly a role model for youth,” Community Board 2 member Lucy Koteen said at a meeting to discuss co-naming the corner of St. James Place and Fulton Street on Tuesday.
“He started selling drugs at 12, he was a school dropout at 17, he was arrested for drugs and weapons charges, he was arrested for parole violations. Frankly it offends me,” Koteen said.
And while it’s not just his waistline that bothers Koteen, neighbor LeRoy McCarthy, 45, who put forward the proposal to name the corner “Christopher Wallace Way,” after the rapper’s real name, fired back that he remains an artistic inspiration — no matter the size of his gut.
“It’s outrageous. People are overweight, it doesn’t mean you’re not a good person. [NJ Gov.] Chris Christie is fat. Does that mean he’s not a good governor? You can’t hold that against someone,” he told The Post.
McCarthy added that plenty of New York City streets are named after people who have behaved badly at some point.
“There are things in everybody’s past that you can nitpick about, from owning slaves to embezzlement,” he said.
“If you’re going by [her] thought process, then all streets should be named after numbers and letters,” he said.
McCarthy said Biggie Smalls is a hero because he told compelling stories about New York City in his songs — and did the best he could while growing up in a ’hood that was teeming with crime and crack.
Other neighbors at the meeting said the rapper isn’t worthy of the honor because he called women sexist and degrading names in his songs.
The issue of whether to co-name the corner was tabled at the CB2 meeting on Tuesday.
In order for the proposal to move forward, Councilwoman Letitia James must write a letter supporting it.
The rapper spent part of his youth living at 226 St. James Place in Clinton Hill and was raised by a single mother.
He was nominated for four Grammys — including one for his hit song “Hypnotize” — before he was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in March 1997.
His 1994 song Juicy declares: “Lunches, brunches, interviews by the pool /Considered a fool cause I dropped out of high school/Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood/And it’s still all good.”
Koteen didn’t immediately return calls for comment.