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The estate of legendary rapper Notorious B.I.G. is suing Target, Home Depot and others over allegations that they sold unauthorized canvas prints of the famed “King of New York” photo that was snapped just days before his death.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, Notorious BIG LLC claims the retailers sold prints illegally created by iCanvas – a small firm that the estate says showed a “complete disregard for celebrities’ personality rights, lack of respect for artists’ efforts, and disdain for intellectual property law.”

“Defendants specifically chose to use Mr. Wallace’s persona, name, image, likeness … in an attempt to capitalize on their fame and extraordinary financial value,” Biggie’s estate writes, referring to his legal name, Christopher George Latore Wallace.

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The image at issue in the new lawsuit is “The King Of New York” – a portrait of Biggie wearing a gold crown in front of a red backdrop, snapped in March 1997 only three days before the rapper was killed in a Los Angeles shooting.

The photos — taken by photographer Barron Claiborne, who is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit — are some of the most well-known images of the late rapper. One is featured in a huge mural in his Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the plastic crown featured in the image sold at auction in 2020 for a whopping $594,750.

In their Tuesday lawsuit, the estate and Claiborne say that iCanvas sold canvas prints of the images for more than eight years without permission. In addition to selling them directly, the lawsuit claims the prints were also sold by Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Nordstrom and Target – each of which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

When contacted about the problem in 2023, Home Depot, Nordstrom and Target removed the offending products, the lawsuit says, but iCanvas and Bed Bath & Beyond allegedly continue to sell them.

The case claims that the sale of the images not only infringed Claiborne’s copyrights to the King images, but also breached federal trademark law and violated the rapper’s likeness rights.

“Mr. Wallace’s fan base has continued to expand since his passing,” the estate’s lawyers write. “Mr. Wallace’s persona, name, image, likeness, and artistic works are so well known that they are almost universally and instantly recognizable, even by those born after he died.”

The case could portend bigger problems for iCanvas. The lawyers for Biggie’s estate say they’re only a few of the “victims” of a “multi-year unlawful campaign” by the company to sell unauthorized prints of famous people and images, including musicians Beyonce, Prince, Jay-Z, Snoop Dog and LL Cool J.

None of the defendants immediately returned requests for comment on Wednesday.

It’s not the first time the Notorious B.I.G. estate has sued over photographs. In 2019, the estate sued hip-hop photographer Chi Modu over his famed 1996 image of Biggie standing in front of the World Trade Center. Though Modu owns the copyrights to the image, the estate claimed he was violating the rapper’s likeness rights by using it on merchandise.

That case settled last year on undisclosed terms – a deal that came with a warning from the estate’s attorneys about the use of his image: “Pictures of Christopher cannot be commercially exploited without a license from our client.”