How real can your music be if you wake up in the morning hearing

The words of The Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace, strike with the weight of lived experience: “How real can your music be if you wake up in the morning hearing birds and crickets? I never hear birds when I wake up. Just a lot of construction work, the smell of Chinese takeout, children screaming, and everybody knocking a different track from Ready to Die as they pass down the street.” In this testimony, he reveals not only the soundscape of his world but the essence of authenticity — that true art must arise from the soil in which it is planted, from the struggles, the chaos, and the harshness of daily life.

The meaning of this quote is rooted in the nature of realness in art. Biggie challenges the listener to understand that music is not born in silence or pastoral serenity, but in the lived environment of the artist. For him, the streets of Brooklyn, alive with noise, danger, hunger, and ambition, were the forge that shaped his voice. To write about peace when one wakes to sirens and shouting is to speak falsely. To write about pain, survival, and hunger when one has felt them is to speak truth. Thus, he declares that authenticity in art comes from the world the artist inhabits.

The origin of these words is found in Biggie’s own upbringing. He was raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, an environment far removed from the quiet fields and calm mornings many imagine. Instead, he grew amidst poverty, crime, and struggle, experiences that poured into his music. His landmark album, Ready to Die, was both a confession and a chronicle of that life, a raw unveiling of what it meant to grow up with few choices and many burdens. The imagery in his quote — the construction work, the takeout smells, the children screaming — paints the world that gave birth to his art.

History echoes with similar voices. The blues, born in the cotton fields and on the plantations of the American South, carried the pain and resilience of its people. Jazz grew from the noise of cities like New Orleans, rising out of crowded bars and rough neighborhoods. Likewise, the poetry of Langston Hughes carried the rhythms of Harlem, and the novels of Charles Dickens exposed the cries of London’s poor. In each case, the greatest works came not from imagined landscapes of ease, but from the real conditions of struggle and survival.

There is also in Biggie’s words a rejection of falsehood. Too often, art can become disconnected from reality, polished into something that may sound beautiful but carries no truth. Biggie reminds us that music must mirror life, and if life is raw, the music must be raw; if life is harsh, the art must be honest about that harshness. To create otherwise is to betray not only oneself but also those who live within that same reality. His music resonated with millions because it told the truth of the streets, unvarnished and unashamed.

The lesson for us is that authenticity must be the foundation of all creation. Whether in art, work, or daily living, we must draw from the reality of our own lives, not from borrowed fantasies. Just as Biggie could not sing of birds and crickets because they were absent from his mornings, so too must we each speak from the ground beneath our feet, from the truth of what we have lived. It is this honesty that gives power to words, credibility to deeds, and endurance to legacy.

So let us take his words as both a challenge and an inspiration. Do not envy another’s peace, nor attempt to wear another’s story. Instead, embrace your own environment, however harsh or humble, and let it shape your voice. For true greatness, like true music, does not come from pretending, but from living — and from daring to speak the truth of that life. For in truth, as Biggie shows us, lies the power to move the world.