Big Pun

Born in The Bronx during the early years of hip-hop, Christopher Rios grew up enjoying basketball, boxing, and other sports. He met his wife Liza in the eighth grade. At the age of five, he broke his leg in a Manhattan municipal park, resulting in a lawsuit against the City of New York, later settled out of court. By all accounts from Pun's family, his early years were very difficult, including witnessing his mother's drug abuse, his father leaving the family, and a step-father who was very hard on Pun. According to his grandmother, Pun would become angry and self-destructive, punching holes in the walls of his family's apartment . At the age of 15, Rios dropped out of Stevenson High School and for some time was homeless, staying in abandoned buildings or at friends' homes.

Sometime during the '80s, he began to write rap lyrics, forming the Full a Clips Crew with Triple Seis, Prospect and Cuban Link who was at the time named "Lyrical Assassin". At this point Big Pun was operating under the alias Big Moon Dawg. Rios met fellow Puerto Rican and Bronx rapper Fat Joe in 1995 and made his commercial debut on Joe's second album, Jealous One's Envy, in addition to appearing on a b-side to Joe's "Envy" single, "Fire Water."

Later, "I'm Not a Player" (featuring an O'Jays sample) was supported by a significant advertising campaign and became an underground hit. The song's remix, "Still Not a Player" (featuring Joe), became Big Pun's first major mainstream hit. His full-length debut Capital Punishment followed in 1998, and was the first album by a solo Latino rapper to go platinum, peaking at #5 on the Billboard 200. Capital Punishment was also nominated for a Grammy, but lost out on the award to Jay-Z's Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life. He became a member of The Terror Squad, a New York-based group of rappers founded by Fat Joe, with most of the roster supplied by the now-defunct Full a Clips Crew.

Despite his athletic adolescence, Big Pun struggled with his weight for most of his life; his weight fluctuated in the early 90's between heavy and obese. In the last years of his life he fluctuated between 450 and 700 pounds. At Fat Joe's urging, Big Pun enrolled in a weight-loss program at Duke University, which he lost 100 pounds, but he eventually quit the program before completing it, returning to New York and gaining back the weight he had lost. On February 7, 2000, Big Pun suffered a fatal heart attack in White Plains, NY.

His second album, Yeeeah Baby, completed before his death, was issued as scheduled in April 2000. It peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts and earned gold record status within three months of its release. It eventually went platinum. A second posthumous album, Endangered Species, was released in April of 2001. Endangered Species collected some of Pun's "greatest hits," previously unreleased material, numerous guest appearances, and remixed "greatest verses." As with his other albums, it also peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200, reaching #7, but didn't sell as much as the previous Pun albums had.

In recent times, Big Punisher was featured with Fat Joe on "Duets: The Last Chapter," Notorious B.I.G's most recent album. The track "Get Your Grind On" begins with a Big Pun radio interview in which he said he would perform a duet with Biggie at the gates of heaven. Punisher was also featured on a track from the revived Terror Squad's second album, True Story, on the track "Bring 'Em Back with Big L."

Sony Records has been considering releasing a second posthumous album featuring unreleased material, but the project is being delayed by Sony. Liza Rios also held an auction in 2005 for her deceased husband's Terror Squad medallion, citing financial difficulties in the wake of Pun's death, and again claiming to have not received any royalty checks for Pun's posthumous album sales (save for a small check from the sales of Endangered Species).

In 2002, Pun's widow, Liza Rios, released a documentary about her late husband, Still Not a Player. The film features commentary from many of Pun's close friends and family members, details the struggles with his weight, and also reveals how at times, Pun would become physically abusive with his wife - in one scene, he is caught on camera while pistol whipping her. The release of the documentary and its content caused a falling out between Fat Joe and Rios, as Rios repeatedly claimed to have not received any royalties from the sales of Endangered Species, which was where the proceeds from that album's sales were designed to go.