Notorious: New film revisits rapper’s life

Stevens MuendoBulky rapper, Christopher Wallace aka Notorious BIG (also referred to as Biggie or Biggie Smalls) had one album in his lifetime. But he did not even live long enough to see it reach the top of the charts. Sixteen days before the album launch, four bullets ended his life.However, to thousands of his fans, Notorious lives forever. Life After Death, released just after his death, debuted at Number One on both the pop and R&B charts, selling 690,000 copies in its first week. It eventually went 10 times platinum. Two of the album’s singles, Hypnotize and Mo Money Mo Problems, topped the singles chart. Later that summer, Sean ‘P Diddy’ Combs released his own debut solo album, No Way Out, which featured his tribute to Notorious, I’ll Be Missing You. And 12 years after his death a new film looks back at the life of the larger-than-life music star. Notorious premiered in Nairobi last week, three weeks after its official launch in the UK.Prophetic titleAt the height of the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop feud, which had already claimed the life of his one-time friend and fellow rapper Tupac Shakur, Biggie travelled to California to promote his second album, the prophetically titled Life After Death.Biggie, 24, was gunned down in a car passenger seat after leaving a party. He left behind a grieving mother and pregnant wife as well as a daughter. In just a few short years, the Brooklyn musician had gone from a teenage drug dealer to one of the brightest stars of the American rap scene, to the morgue — another victim of the escalating violence between rappers from either side of the country.No-one has yet been convicted of either his murder or the death of Shakur, but documentaries, books and magazine articles offer differing theories as to who is responsible, and why. The film Notorious does not speculate, choosing to focus on family life, friendships and his rapid rise to stardom. The movie has been made with the permission of Biggie Small’s mother, Voletta Wallace, who shares a producer’s credit."It was very painful to find out certain things about your son that you never knew," said the single mum, who raised her son near the tough neighbourhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York."But if I had left them out, it wouldn’t be his life."A bright student with a hulking figure — he was 6ft 3in and weighed more than 21 stone (133kg) — the young Biggie dropped out of school as a teenager when he learnt he was to become a father. He swapped the classroom for a street corner to sell drugs. One of the scenes in the film shows Biggie’s fellow drug dealers expressing shock as he sells crack cocaine to a heavily pregnant addict.His mother admits her son had a dark side which needed to be explored: "I wanted this to be real, I did not want to obliterate the negatives and focus on the positives."Biggie as a boy is played in the film by his real-life son Christopher Wallace Jr. But to play the physically imposing adult Biggie, the film’s producers went closer to his roots and found a newcomer who hailed from Biggie’s neighbourhood.In his debut performance, Jamal Woolard is the man who breathes life into the rap legend. Given a crash course in acting at New York’s famed Juilliard School, Woolard, who raps under the name Gravy, learnt to walk, talk, rap and even stand like Biggie.Rappers feudsHelping Biggie make the transition from hustler to artist was his friend, producer and mentor Combs, played by Derek Luke in the movie.Pledging to make the talented 19-year-old a millionaire by 21, Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, was true to his word. Luke admits he was conscious of how Combs, the executive producer of Notorious, would view his performance.The subject of who killed Biggie and Tupac, who was shot dead six months prior to Biggie, remains a mystery. At the time, East Coast and West Coast artistes were using songs to snipe at one another, and were involved in some very public disputes.Tupac created the Outlawz group and Biggie had junior M.A.F.I.A, two groups which begun to hate each other. Their feud was later to generate to what is now known as the East-West Coast beef. The lyrics of Hit Em Up (Tupac and Outlawz) was in bad taste to the East side. In the song, Tupac chides everybody including the entire Bad Boys Entertainment Label staff. And before anyone could know it, the lyrics were turning to physical wars. The feud was a follow up to past ones when several artistes began seeking attention. In late 1992, rapper-cum-producer Dr Dre’s solo debut album, The Chronic, was released on the fledgling Death Row Records. In late 1993, Death Row Records released Doggystyle, the debut album by Dr Dre protÈgÈ and Long Beach-based Snoop Dogg.In 1993, Combs founded the New York-centred hip-hop label, Bad Boy Records. The next year, the label’s debut releases by Brooklyn-based Biggie and Long Island-based rapper Craig Mack became immediate critical and commercial successes, and seemed to revitalise the East Coast hip-hop scene by 1995.Tupac, meanwhile, forged a rivalry with Biggie, publicly accusing him and Combs of having facilitated his being robbed and shot five times in the lobby of a New York recording studio on November 30, 1994. Shortly after Tupac’s shooting, Who Shot Ya?, a B-side track from the Biggie’s Big Poppa single was released. Although Combs and Biggie emphatically denied having anything to do with the shooting . Tupac interpreted it as Biggie’s way of taunting him, and claimed it proved that Bad Boy had set him up.No blameNotorious reflects on Biggie and Tupac’s failing relationship without laying the blame squarely at anyone’s door, though Biggie is completely exonerated.In the years since the shootings, the feud has died down, but the film may inadvertently reignite old flames.A man was shot at a recent screening of the film in the US, but director George Tillman is keen to play down any link.-Information from BBC

Notorious: New film revisits rapper’s life

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