Barney loves it when you call him “Big Poppa”

On closer examination, Barney the purple dinosaur and Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., had a few important things in common. Both exerted enormous influence over young people in the 1990s. At the same time Biggie was dominating the airwaves with the Isley Brothers-sampling single “Big Poppa” from the Ready To Die album in 1994, the gentle, magenta-hued tyrannosaurus was ruling the world of children’s television with his enormously popular PBS series Barney & Friends. Biggie and Barney were both large and in charge during the Bill Clinton years. Now, these two titans of an earlier era are united in a video mashup from Mylo The Cat, who specializes in combining children’s programming and classic hip-hop. In this clip, Barney is Biggie, performing “Big Poppa” with his usual panache. Barney’s little yellow sidekick B.J. plays the role of Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. And those kids who were always hanging out with Barney? They’re the Junior M.A.F.I.A. Baby Bop is here, too, possibly as an analogue to Faith Evans.