This week, Mr. Wallace, who was killed in 1997, got another honor: Fulton Street at St. James Place in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn — where he grew up — is now Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace Way.

City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, who worked on the renaming effort, spoke on Monday at the street sign’s unveiling.

“My parents growing up had Malcolm and Martin,” she told the crowd, referring to Malcolm X and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “We had Biggie and Tupac, the most influential rappers and lyricists of our time. The greatest minds and greatest speakers of our time.”

She added that the event was not just pageantry.

“Why this street co-naming is important is because while everybody is coming to Brooklyn, New York, they want to erase the history,” she said . “They want to put up new cafes and boutiques and to push us out of our community.”

Few honors are as visible as a name on a public space. And in the last decade, at least nine of those spaces in New York have been named for hip-hop pioneers, according to Renee Foster of the Universal Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx.