On his song “Suicidal Thoughts,” the Notorious B.I.G.
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Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell isn’t anywhere near a warts-and-all exposé. One particularly amusing clip is him explaining how his mother has no idea what rappers do or how much they make. This isn’t to say the documentary makes it look like Biggie hid things from his mom. Voletta is a country and western music fan, so she doesn’t let it keep her up nights. The film may be worth watching just for the look on her face when she remembers his album was “reeking with profanity.” She adheres to his warning that his music is not for anyone over 35, and never played it at home. She didn’t even know there were bad words in his songs until her friend bought one of his records and told her. The warmest recollections come from Voletta, who also contributed family photos capturing Biggie growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and vacationing annually in her hometown Trelawny, Jamaica. Malloy is innovative in how he stages the interviews, setting one up in a huge abandoned church, others in theaters or the expanse of Jamaican exteriors. It opens at his funeral, where Brooklyn represented with a communal outpouring of love. Emmett Malloy’s Netflix documentary doesn’t dwell on it. Nick Broomfield’s 2002 documentary Biggie & Tupac and the 2009 biopic Notorious both covered Biggie’s death. But the most obvious omission is Lil’ Kim. The film also talks with Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s Cease and Chico Del Vec. 50 Grand breaks down Biggie’s breakthrough “Party & Bullshit.” Easy Mo Bee talks about how “Juicy” developed. That was one of the true revelations of the film. His ears took in a wide range of music, he couldn’t even go to sleep unless country music was playing. Wallace’s mother Voletta Wallace, talks about how the music of Jamaica figured strongly in Biggie’s musical development. Biggie pulled in sonic impressions from the Geto Boys to Toto through Big Daddy Kane and into Kool G Rap. They then expertly show how this works with a mix of Biggie rapping over a solo jazz drummer laying out a live bebop beat.īiggie was known as a “gangsta rapper,” but he broke musical boundaries both on record and especially on stage. He explains how drummers like Max Roach incorporated syncopated rhythms which, if slowed down, are the pulsing root of Biggie’s delivery. The most illuminating revelations come from jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison who recalls listening to bebop records with his neighbor, the young Chris Wallace.
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Musically, it’s disappointing that we get more talk about how great Biggie is over what makes his sound so unique. He remembers him as the “greatest rapper of all time.” Faith Evans recalls a force of nature who took everyone with him, so long as they would put in the work.
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It’s what gave him the edge to win a legendary rap battle when he was just 17 years old. Smalls had been singing those soul classics and listening to jazz greats from the earliest age. When Biggie rapped he had “so much style I should be down with the Stylistics” he was being artistically autobiographical.
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But, as Sean Combs says at the very start of Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, “This story doesn’t have to have a tragic ending.”Ĭombs, who co-produced the film, celebrates the contradictions and how they informed the music. His first album was called Ready to Die and his next was Life After Death, but he had a life in between. A rapper who was always heard singing, a serious artist who never stopped clowning, he took the streets with him knowing it would take him down. Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace but AKA Notorious B.I.G., is a contradictory legend.