With B.I.G. Assist, Gangsta Rappers Junior M.A.F.I.A Poised To Break Out

Junior M.A.F.I.A. became the latest hip-hop act to bum rush the Top 10 pop album charts, thanks to big help from an old neighborhood friend. Or shall we say B.I.G. help.

The Notorious B.I.G, alias Biggy Smalls, whose 2 million-selling “Ready To Die” album single-handedly brought the focus of hip-hop back to its New York birthplace, grew up in the same Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn as the nine members of Junior M.A.F.I.A.

Once B.I.G. became, uh, substantial on the charts, he chose Junior M.A.F.I.A. as his first project for his production company (his wife, Faith Evans, was a close second).

And B.I.G.’s appearance on four tracks on the Junior M.A.F.I.A. debut, “Conspiracy,” and its hit single “Player’s Anthem” brought as much recognition to the young crew as Snoop Doggy Dogg’s success brought to his Dogg Pound cronies.

And now, Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s first major stage work comes on the season’s biggest hip-hop and R&B tour. It stars Jodeci and also features Mary J. Blige, Naughty by Nature, Adina Howard, Faith Evans, the Luniz and the Notorious B.I.G.

For a show already crowded with talent, Junior M.A.F.I.A. will be further subdivided into four different acts: a trio called the Sixes, a duo called the Snakes, Solo MC Klepto and the diminutive MC Little Kim.

Kim stands 4-foot-7 but is known in the group as Big Momma, not because of her tough-talking remake of the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers” but because she’s the oldest member of the group, at 20.

It’s Kim, along with Little Caesar of the Sixes and Notorious B.I.G., who trade verses on “Player’s Anthem.”

It may be confusing for fans to keep Junior M.A.F.I.A. personnel straight, but for the group, it’s all family, says Sixes member Chico.

“We’ve all been around since all of us was little,” he says over the phone from New York. “We all live all in one area, B.I.G. on one block, the rest of us on the next block. We’d do street stuff together.

And all this just worked out. He said we’d get on a label, if we were willing to wait for him to get on, and we waited.”

As for B.I.G.’s giant success, “It’s surprising,” Chico says. “He wasn’t expecting to be like this. But thank God for it, word up.”