Did Biggie Smalls predict the COVID-19 pandemic in his 1994 song lyrics? No, that's not true: The rapper, real name Christopher Wallace, did not write about the SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak decades before it occurred. The video claiming to show the Notorious B.I.G. singing about COVID uses altered lyrics to his song "Juicy." He never mentioned COVID or the word "pandemic" in the song released on his 1994 debut album "Ready to Die."
The claim appeared as a video (archived here) where it was published on Instagram on March 13, 2023. It opened with sound in the video:
It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! magazine. There will be a global pandemic in 2019.
This is what the video looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Apr 7 17:55:23 2023 UTC)
The video posted on Instagram shows the text "Biggie Smalls predicted COVID-19 in 1994," with a crying emoji. The sound, while footage from a Biggie video rolls, says, "It was all a dream I used to read Word Up! magazine. There will be a global pandemic in 2019," with the last part altered to add the "global pandemic" reference. The video uses footage from Biggie's real "Juicy" video, as seen on YouTube beginning at :21:
However, according to Genius.com, the real lyrics of the song "Juicy" do not mention the words COVID or global or pandemic. They are:
It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! magazine
Salt-n-Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine
Biggie Smalls was shot to death in Los Angeles in 1997.
Lead Stories has debunked claims of pop culture predicting the coronavirus pandemic here, here and here.
