Biggie’s Ready to Die Cover Baby: Now a High Schooler With Serious Bragging Rights

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Keithroy Yearwood’s actions as an infant led to some serious cool-kid cred in high school.

Yearwood has come forward and claimed to be the baby on the cover of Ready To Die, Notorious B.I.G.’s classic debut album. He joins other famous cover babies who have revealed their identities in recent years, like Spencer Elden (aka the swimming Nirvana “Nevermind” baby) and Heather DeLoach (aka the bumblebee girl on Blind Melons’ self-titled album). There’s also Nicole Fiorentino, the current bassist for the Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan tweeted she was one of the two girls on the band’s “Siamese Dream” cover, though the assistant photographer on the shoot said that Fiorentino is too old to be the child model.

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Yearwood, an 18-year-old senior at Wallkill Valley Regional High School, always knew he was the cover star of Ready To Die, but he didn’t realize the implications of the album on the rap world until he was older.

“When I first found out about it, it wasn’t a big deal to me,” he told the New York Daily News. “Now, of course, it’s a big deal to me.”

Unfortunately, Bad Boy Records (Sean “Diddy” Combs’ label) could not confirm that Yearwood was the baby. They said the records were lost, and all that was certain of was that the baby was chosen from a modeling agency. Yearwood’s mother, however, held onto the original contract from the shoot. For further proof, she provided the Daily News with other baby photos of Yearwood. She claims that it was hard to get gigs for her son because of his amazing hair, so she was glad when he booked the gig. Yearwood made a measly $150 for the two hours it took to pose for the cover.

Sadly, Yearwood has not kept the afro, but we at NewsFeed see the resemblance between his baby photo and his pictures today. So it’s case closed for us.

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