The Notorious B.I.G. was not happy with The Roots after they released the video for “What They Do”. He felt that The Roots were taking a direct jab at his work and commented in The Source that he had been disrespected by them. In the early years of their career, The Roots were relatively unknown, but they had one very famous supporter in The Notorious B.I.G. He was a huge fan of the band and went out of his way to support them whenever he could. Questlove said, “Biggie was like our biggest champion. When he did Ego Trip magazine he championed us and Jeru higher than anyone. He put Brooklyn onto The Roots.” However, things took a sour turn when The Roots released the video for their song “What They Do.” The video was a sarcastic take on the rise of champagne culture and the growing divide between the haves and have-nots. Questlove said that while they didn’t intend to directly reference someone’s video, they ended up making a video that was similar in style to Biggie’s “One More Chance.” “We told the director we don’t want to do a direct reference to someone’s video,” Questlove said. “We just talking about the impending lurking of this new — at the time it seemed like the new apartheid — the have-nots versus the haves. Based on the way the set looked, we didn’t know we were doing a direct reference to ‘One More Chance.’ So, when we saw the final cut, they showed it to us and I was like ‘Oh, damn.’ But it was too late. When The Source reached out to Questlove for a comment, he offered instead to write an op-ed fully explaining himself. However, the next day, Biggie was k*lled. Questlove: I said, let me do an op-ed. What I wanted to do was kind of explain the dangers, New York was kind of becoming divided by the haves and the have-nots and I wrote this beautiful manifesto. I faxed it to The Source, and literally, I called The Source. It took me 10 hours to do it. It was great. Called The Source and said ‘Okay, I’m ready to send the response-to-Biggie op-ed.’ And they’re like ‘Oh God, you didn’t hear what happened did you?’ And I was like ‘What are you talking about?’ They said ‘Biggie’s dead.’ And that k*lled me. I never made it right.”