Biggie Smalls documentary review: Netflix film skims over rap feuds to tell a richer story

Instead of getting bogged down in the East Coast-West Coast controversy, this film explores another side to Christopher Wallace
Jochan Embley24 February 2021

Any film about the life and work of The Notorious B.I.G. (real name Christopher Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls) sits in the shadow of his death. The feud between the East and West Coast rap scenes that erupted in the Nineties is the stuff of grim legend — an escalated lyrical rivalry eventually took the lives of the two warring sides’ brightest talents, Los Angeles’ Tupac Shakur and New York’s Biggie Smalls. Both men were barely a few years into adulthood when they were shot dead, and the killings remain unsolved.

So when this new Netflix documentary about Biggie’s life finally picks up all that weighty baggage after about 80 minutes with only brief mention, and then more or less discards it in a matter of minutes, it jars.

Still, there may well be good reason behind it. Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who signed Biggie to his Bad Boy label to release the seismic debut album Ready to Die, and the late rapper’s mother, Voletta Wallace, were involved in the making of the Notorious biopic, the 2009 film on Biggie’s life that went into detail on the feud. They both appear as talking heads and executive producers on this documentary. Do they feel like they’ve already said what needs to be said about the whole thing — something that, judging by their interviews here, still aches to talk about? You couldn’t blame them.

Those hungry to hear more about hip-hop’s most infamous true-crime drama are chucked a few tidbits. We see footage from 1993, pre-beef, of Shakur and Wallace drinking together as friends. Later, in Biggie’s last ever interview from 1997, he seems upset at how his lyrics were misinterpreted as digs against the West Coast by those who wanted to heighten the tensions. After Shakur got shot for the first time in 1994, he publicly accused Biggie and Bad Boy of being involved; in this documentary, his wife Faith Evans remembers Wallace “crying” down the phone after hearing the news of Shakur’s death.

Instead of treading much further into the mire, the documentary, directed by Emmett Malloy, tells another story. It focuses on Wallace as a supremely gifted artist, whose lyricism and flow “transcended” all that preceded it, but also as a man constantly being torn between his undoubted promise as a rapper and a life of money-making crime on the streets of Brooklyn.

The majority of the footage is taken from the rarely seen “visual diary” of Damion ‘D-Roc’ Butler, a childhood friend of Biggie’s who, as the nascent rapper began to record music and play shows, filmed pretty much everything. It’s a captivating look at this cultural icon in his more candid moments, young and playful rather than absorbed by his braggadocious rap persona.

We also hear about Biggie’s trips to his mother’s homeland of Jamaica every summer as a child, and how his uncle would immerse him in the island’s sound system culture — a formative experience that fed into Biggie resurrecting the spirit of reggae sound clashes in his early rap battles back in Brooklyn.

The Notorious B.I.G. and 50 Grand
George DuBose

The saxophonist Donald Harrison, who grew up around the corner from Wallace’s family home, talks about how he took the youngster under his wing as a mentor, schooling him in the wider arts, from jazz to Picasso. Harris draws convincing parallels between bebop drum solos and Biggie’s rap cadences, and is clearly in awe of his talents — it’s moving to hear how Wallace tried to keep him away from selling crack, and hear him speak about how much he misses Wallace to this day.

There are raw recollections about Wallace’s time as a drug dealer; we hear of friends shot dead by rival gang members, and his mother is still visibly heartbroken over the time her son brought crack into their home without her knowing. But there are heartening moments — his surviving friends talk about how grateful they are to Biggie for taking them beyond the confines of New York. In one snippet of D-Roc’s footage, he marvels over the view of a sunset beyond the mountains.

So while perhaps the most notorious part of Notorious B.I.G.’s legacy is left largely to rest, there’s plenty to get swept up by in this documentary. As the film makes a good case for, and as Diddy reiterates in the final moments: “He had a life that had such a profound effect. It really gave birth to the future of hip-hop. It wasn’t all for nothing.”

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell arrives on Netflix on March 1

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