Big Pun's Widow Liza Rios Talks About Possible Reality Show

Yeeah baby, she’s crushin’ it.

Big Pun’s best-known commercial success, the platinum album “Capital Punishment” – featuring the smash hit “Still Not a Player” – was released 18 years ago last week. Even though the rapper – whose real name was Christopher Rios – died in 2000, his wife Liza Rios is still on her grind.

This month, she’s set to film the pilot for a reality show, tentatively titled “Pardon the Puns.” If it gets picked up, the show will feature 43-year-old Rios and her three adult children – 22-year-old rapper Chris, 24-year-old songwriter Vanessa, and 25-year-old mother and glasses designer Amanda.

“I’m a single mom, we got the three kids and we’re just showing our growth. Even though we’re a legendary family we’re down to earth,” she told the Daily News.

“We’re not afraid to show who we really are.”

After years just outside the limelight, Rios is stepping up again. After her husband’s death, Rios took part in a 2002 documentary but, after that, stayed mostly on the sidelines except for the occasional interview.

She resurfaced in gossip columns in 2014 as the result of a lawsuit against Pun’s former business partner, fellow Puerto Rican rapper Fat Joe. The suit – which Rios said is still not settled – alleges that the formerly heavy rapper failed to hold up his end of an agreement to give Big Pun’s family a cut of posthumous sales.

In the aftermath of Pun’s death – caused by a heart attack – Rios struggled. Pun had been her first relationship; she started seeing him at 14 and got married at 17, already pregnant with the rapper’s first child.

Aside from the loss of her first love, Rios also struggled with the loss of the family provider. She lost the house and ended up living in a shelter for a time. Eventually, she picked up the pieces.

Between royalties and work as a hairdresser, she pulled the family out of dire financial straits – and pulled herself together as well.

“What I’ve been doing is getting my head together — I’ve been through a lot and I’m in a much better place,” she said.

This year, she started doing speaking events across the state. She has more planned for the future, including one at Covenant House, a nonprofit charity in Manhattan.

“In May,” she said, “ I’m going to a high school to speak to troubled teens so that’s basically the path that I’m taking.”

She has first-hand knowledge of the struggles of homelessness and teenage pregnancy – as well as domestic violence and infidelity. Though she remained unfailingly supportive of Pun, Rios confessed that life with him was not always easy.

Aside from her speaking engagements, Rios does a weekly radio show. She’s working on a memoir and has plans to start a nonprofit foundation to "bring awareness of self-love."

Last week, Rios oversaw a Lower East Side display of art and artifacts celebrating her late husband’s life and work.

Aside from various pieces of an art, painted both before and after Pun’s death, the display featured his platinum plaque, the leather jersey in wore in J.Lo’s “Feelin’ so Good” video, the suit he wore for the Grammys and the clothing he wore on the cover of The Source – an issue ultimately released after his death. One the opening day of the display at Avant Garde LES, Rios even brought Pun’s ashes.

The first evening attracted a huge standing-room-only crowd to the tiny Grand Street gallery, but the following days still brought in a steady stream of visitors.

The timing of the display was not accidental, Rios said — all of Big Pun’s albums were released in April.

His posthumous greatest hits, titled “Endangered Species” was released April 3, 2001; “Yeeeah Baby,” the album he was working on at the time of his death, was released April 4, 2000; and “Capital Punishment – the only album released during his lifetime – came out April 28, 1998.

Reflecting on all that for a minute, she cracked a smile.

“April is like Pun month,” she said.

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