momosity
If he was, then I'm glad I never paid money to hear his music. Between getting one woman pregnant with no means of support to moving on to the next, I wasn't happy to see that he was so irresponsible. And then getting married to Faith Evans and cheating on her with such a provable lie, I'm not sure if it was taken from real life and he was really that dumb, or the screenwriters thought the audience wouldn't care.Well, I care. "Baby-Daddies" need to step up and take care of their children. If not, well, there's condoms, and then there's the operation (a little snip, and no more Baby Mamas!).SAD. And I would have appreciated some more time with Tupac on screen. Anthony Mackie is one of my favorite actors. Not to mention the lack of a Jamaican accent that Angela Bassett didn't even try for; she knew she was slumming.
Steve Pulaski
If we're not talking about the impact rapper Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace left on the rap world, becoming an icon in his early twenties for his equally cut-throat and poetic lyricism, then we're talking about the finals days and unexpected death of Wallace when he was shot and killed in California in a drive-by shooting. Rarely do we talk much about Wallace's life as young boy, a teenager, and somebody who tried to break into the rap game before being picked up by Sean "Puffy" Combs, who had faith in him and his abilities.George Tillman, Jr.'s Notorious makes a bold attempt at detailing those years and, as a result, produces a captivating biopic, one that is built on complete and total devotion, admiration, disgust, but above all, interest in its character and not his rapping persona. Notorious is about Christopher Wallace, the complex, often contradictory, heavyset man who came from a solid home in New York to become one of the biggest names the rap industry has ever seen before being shot and killed. Not the cocky, flashy, and well-groomed persona he was on stage and on CDs known as "The Notorious B.I.G.." Notorious stars out in humble beginnings, where Christopher was a young kid kept in line by his Jamaican mother Voletta (Angela Bassett), who believes in tough love and discipline, with the bad parts of the neighborhood lurking right around the corner. In the grand scheme - and even compared to the person who is often brought up in conversations about Wallace, Tupac Shakur - Wallace had a very good upbringing, despite living very close to the projects of New York right in the heat of the crack cocaine epidemic that crippled low-income areas. Wallace was told never to leave his front stoop, but seeing all the people dealing drugs on the street not far from his own stoop, he began to idolize them in a way, aspiring to go from "a kid on the stoop to a boy in the streets." In his teenage years, Wallace began dealing drugs and collecting a great deal of money to only be eventually kicked out by his mother, who finds a plateful of cocaine concealed underneath his bed. Much like when Shakur left home as a teenager, Wallace's role models became petty street hustlers. Jail-time and incarcerations came and went, which gave Wallace time to write down his thoughts, which turned into rhymes, which were then worked into cut-throat lyrics that only the genre of rap could fittingly handle and accept. Despite this, in his teenage years, Wallace still said, "the streets were my wife, while my music was the bitch on the side." That all changed after record companies began looking to expand their line of rap artists, one in particular being Sean Combs' Bad Boy Records, who saw the untold potential in Wallace and signed him to a deal. From there on out, it was a road of considerable highs, testing lows, and incredible experiences, from having several kids with several different women, getting caught up in the bitter and violent East Coast/West Coast rivalry in the rap game, and trying to keep friends close while the going gets tough.Notorious illustrates these bitter environments through slick, black-and-teal cinematography, colored and coordinated by Michael Grady in an intense way. The film keeps this color scheme throughout most of the film, and when it doesn't, it captures its brighter scenes with hues of orange and yellow, often showing a beautiful, contrasting array of vivid colors. The film's look is beautiful, and that's one of the ways the film keeps you in tuned with what is occurring. However, at the forefront of all of the events in the film is Jamal Woolard, a real find of an actor. A New York-born rapper, Woolard seems to know the environment of the streets well, or at least does a great job acting like he does. Woolard plays Wallace with nothing but conviction, turning emotional scenes into scenes that bear real emotion (consider when he tries to calm down his long-suffering wife Faith (Antonique Smith) the first time) and darker, more brutal scenes (consider when he threatens Faith after a shocking discovery) into a powerhouse of performance and feeling. Woolard is an unstoppable force in the film, and the chemistry he forms with Bassett, while likely to find itself unmentioned by the abundance of events and ideas going on in the film, deserves a mention as well. Bassett's tough-love character further builds Wallace as a character, and we can see in the scenes where Woolard and Bassett are the only two present that she is affecting him in such a way that can barely be described but can seriously be felt.Writers Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker form a compelling narrative when there could've easily been a shortchanging one. With one-hundred and twenty long minutes to fill, Bythewood (who also wrote Spike Lee's incredible drama Get on the Bus) and Coker go through the events of Wallace's life and fill them with character, humanity, and style. With that, they also take careful time to illustrate Wallace as the complex figure he was, often saying one thing, but doing something else. The film doesn't make the case he was a role model, frequently being unfaithful to his girlfriends and children, and going back on his word several times in the face of turmoil and uncertainty, but paints him more as a figure that came to define some of rap music's core elements.Notorious is a rousing biopic, never boring, filled with invigorating and memorable music, some of which even performed by Woolard himself, and bearing very skilled people in the writing and directing fields to assure justice was done to one of rap music's most charismatic and defining figures.Starring: Jamal Woolard, Angela Bassett, Derek Luke, Antonique Smith, and Anthony Mackie. Directed by: George Tillman, Jr..
Lilstaarss
This is one of my favorite movies ever not only because he is my favorite artist, but it's about how he went from drugs and problems to being one of the greatest rapper ever. I remember that a friend to me was a real Biggie fan, and by that time I didn't know who Biggie was. Every day he showed me Biggie songs and the only rapper I was listening to was Tupac. He told me one day that it will be a movie that is about Biggie, and after 2 months the movie was released. We rented the movie and I wasn't so positive to it. But It ended up to being one of my favorite movies.The film is about Christopher Wallace and his life, how he went from being a crack-dealer to a legendary musician. How puffy helped him on the road and made him to the one he became, and how Christopher helped Lil Kim to be the one she became. My favorite part is when he has his beef with Tupac and he is performing in Los Angeles and the people there hates him and he says "you know what, I don't give a f..." And after that he raps the song "who shot ya" that some people say is a dis against Tupac. I like this film because its reality. It's about how it is to live in misery but still fighting hard to reach your goal, and the harder you fight to reach it, the closer you will be to it and one day you'll succeed!
