How Elliot Osagie brought The Notorious B.I.G. back to life on stage

The bedrock of Elliot Osagie’s success in the entertainment industry stems from his background as a software engineer. He recently talked to Pollstar Magazine where they describe him as “a music lover — although his tastes run more to Miles Davis than Biggie Smalls — a ‘math guy’ and software engineer… always looking for ways to connect his two passions.” This alludes to his ability to bridge his knowledge in tech and his inclination for music (studying instruments since the age of nine and listening to homegrown greats like Otis Redding and Gladys Knight in Georgia, where he was born and raised) to amplify audiences, build platforms, and drive traffic to entertainment IPs, platforms and properties.

As he continued to fine tune his skills in these areas, gaining more notoriety within the industry, he started to push the boundaries of what could be possible, especially as he started to explore the concept of the Web3 space.

While working with legendary artists, Osagie started to step into the notion of creating avatar properties and IPs around iconic artists of all generations who are no longer able to share their music and stories with this generation of music enthusiasts, in their own words, in their own persona outside of videos and music they left behind.

That’s when he created the concept to develop and design an avatar model and framework for iconic music artists that could exist in the then upcoming web3 space, three to four years before the boom that we are experiencing now in web3 and NFTs, before the average consumer knew what web3 was.

He started to question how we could bring these artists to life, in the digital sense, in the form of highly sophisticated avatars, much like the film industry’s ability to bring younger versions of actors to life through motion capture technology.

He wanted to explore how to bring these concepts to the web3 space, and he started at home with Rolling Stone’s “greatest rapper that ever lived,” The Notorious B.I.G. As quoted by Variety Osagie, who is the founder of Willingie, “spearheaded the technology development of Biggie’s avatar.” As related to the reasoning behind the innovation, Variety quoted Osagie, saying, “‘Biggie’s music has been streamed over 11 billion times worldwide and 6.5 billion in the U.S. alone, but because of his untimely death there just wasn’t enough content to support the overwhelming demand for his music,’ Osagie said. ‘This is why I originated the idea and came up with the decision to create a digital avatar.’” His work with The Notorious B.I.G. estate for the last decade bridged the trust between Osagie and MS. Voletta Wallace, Biggie’s mother.

She trusted his ability to create this new piece of technology that would exist in a space that wasn’t even built yet, while staying true to the essence of her son, the iconic Biggie Smalls.

According to Pollstar Magazine “‘After being in it for seven or eight years, I realized there was more I could do to connect what I do with Biggie, as long as it went through the correct channel,’ Osagie says.

That channel is, of course, Mama Wallace.

‘We want to build a digital version of your son and have him live in a digital world’ is not a normal conversation.

There’s no roadmap for it but Osagie said he’d already built a tremendous amount of trust with Ms. Wallace, enough that she understood he wouldn’t cut corners or make her son a caricature. Any change to the design of the avatar had her approval, every step of the way.

But even with that blessing and guidance, Osagie recognizes that creating Biggie is a burden and a responsibility.

To many people, the Biggie avatar will be the only real way to interact with and experience him and a creator has to nail the authenticity.

‘For it to actually connect, you have to balance who they really were with how they were perceived,’ he says.

Even he had a vision that Biggie was a gangster and a humourless tough, but the reality is that he was whimsical and clever. All of that had to come across in the avatar and in The Brook.

The concert and the world it occupies was critically acclaimed, one of the successes of the sometimes turbulent debut of Web3, drawing nearly 70,000 views through Oculus and via Biggie’s Facebook page in its first weekend alone.”

When bringing The Notorious B.I.G. to the Metaverse was announced, Ms. Wallace was quoted by The Hollywood Reporter as saying, “technology continues to create opportunities that are beyond one’s imagination and I’m excited that we are stepping into the future with a beautiful rendition of a hyperrealistic avatar of my son Christopher.

I’m thankful for our wonderful team of creative partners for their work to deliver Biggie into new media for his fans to enjoy.” And according to Variety “Elliot Osagie, founder of Willingie, spearheaded the technology development of Biggie’s avatar.”

When asked about where the Web3 space is going next, and where the possible line should be in terms of creating new content and narratives around legendary music artists, MIT Technology Review quoted Osagie’s response, using an upcoming metaverse project with acclaimed jazz legend as an example: “Miles Davis had a career that lasted decades. If you wanted to tell a story about his music, that’s cool. If you wanted to animate his avatar and have him playing cards with Drake—well, that’s not something that could have happened. The real line for me is that the artist is doing what they were doing.”