For native New Yorkers above the age of 30, Max Biggaveli is as endemic to Harlem as the Apollo Theater. When he emerged in 2005 with “G’s Up,” his entire persona seemed to be a fever dream of every trope assigned to a slick-talking Harlem cat: a knack for wordsmithing insults and compliments with aplomb; an almost reflexive trigger for claiming inconceivable feats of human accomplishment (which could alternately be construed as lying); a weakness for indulging in vices and hustles; and a fastidious attention to personal grooming. Even his moniker, Biggaveli, is evidence of his affinity for theatrics, the surname being a crude portmanteau of Tupac’s Makaveli persona, Jay-Z’s “Jigga”, and Notorious B.I.G.’s original stage name, Biggie Smalls. “You not wavier than the wavy man,” he quipped in a 2008 interview for The Come Up DVD, his shoulder-length permed hair flowing with the wind. “I got a better car, I got better songs, I look better, I got more b—es, nigga, I just live better than you.” Well before the modern understanding of memes, his one-liners reverberated to his fans and propagated through platforms like YouTube and WorldStarHipHop, affording him infamy well into the 2010s and beyond.
By 2008, Max would be publicly at odds with the Diplomats’ Jim Jones after years of helping construct melodies and songs for Jones and Cam’ron. After a robbery gone wrong landed Max B in prison with a $2 million bond, Jones bailed him out in exchange for acquiring all of Max’s publishing to date. (Later, Jones would sign a major label deal at Columbia off of the hook Max B wrote for “We Fly High.”) Max’s understandable public resentment not only generated once-in-a-lifetime interview one-liners but a deluge of records that would ultimately become cult classics for Uptown New York City: “Sexy Love” and “She Touched it In Miami.” He also began collaborating with a then-emerging young Arab rapper from the Bronx, French Montana, on a mixtape series called Coke Wave, that brought Montana’s visibility to new heights.
