The Tupac Shakur biographical film All Eyez on Me was being released in cinemas, and I had watched the fantastic N.W.A. biographical film Straight Outta Compton, so I felt it only right to watch this film focusing on one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time. Basically young Christopher George Latore Wallace (Christopher Jordan Wallace, Biggie's son) lived his childhood years in Brooklyn, New York, and became a drug dealer at the height of the crack epidemic, hustling with Damion "D-Roc" Butler (Dennis L.A. White) and Lil' Cease (Marc John Jefferies). Christopher (Jamal Woolard) is told by his girlfriend Jan Jackson (Julia Pace Mitchell) that she is pregnant, so he earns more money to support his family, taking his drug dealing seriously, and participates in a rap battle, which he wins, but his mother Voletta (Angela Bassett) kicks him out for drug possession and not attending school. Christopher spends nine months in prison for possession of guns and drugs, until he is bailed, then he meets Kimberly "'Lil Kim" Jones (Naturi Naughton), but she was abused in a previous relationship, so refuses to pursue another. Christopher reconciles with his mother and visits his newborn daughter, T'Yanna, then he catches the attention of ambitious record producer for Uptown, Sean "Puffy" Combs, or "Puff Daddy", or "P. Diddy" (Derek Luke), with his recorded demo, under the name "Biggie Smalls", he is promised a record deal, but it falls through, and he and D-Roc are again arrested, but D-Roc takes the blame to allow Chris to pursue his music career. Biggie is depressed finding out his mother has breast cancer, but Puffy establishes new record label Bad Boy and signs Biggie, he records his debut album Ready to Die, and during a photo shoot meets R&B singer Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), they begin a relationship, and marry, she catches him cheating, but they later reconcile, but tension still grows between Chris, Faith, Jan and Kim. Celebrating the release of the album, Biggie, also becoming known as "The Notorious B.I.G.", meets rapper Tupac "2Pac" Shakur (Anthony Mackie), he admires 2Pac, but questions people he associates with, Biggie blames Bad Boy when the news breaks that 2Pac is robbed and shot, dissing the record label at an awards ceremony. Rivalry increases between Biggie and 2Pac, the media refer to it as the "East Coast-West Coast rivalry", with attacks made on both sides, an unknown caller gives Biggie a death threat, and 2Pac and Suge Knight (Sean Ringgold) verbally assault Biggie at a party. 2Pac interprets Biggie's latest song "Who Shot Ya?" as a diss at him, but Biggie and Puffy claim it was recorded before the shooting, 2Pac responds with a diss song at Bad Boy called "Hit 'Em Up", then 2Pac and Faith have a magazine photo shoot together, but she insists to Biggie nothing happened between them, they try to reconcile when she tells him she is pregnant with their child. The East and West coast rivalry continues to escalate, Biggie gets booed at a concert in Sacramento, California, but then he performs "Who Shot Ya?", the rivalry between Biggie and 2Pac continues until 2Pac is killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Biggie and D-Roc renew their friendship, Biggie considers pulling out of the rap game, but he goes to Los Angeles, California to promote his upcoming album Life After Death, bringing D-Roc, Lil' Cease, Puff and Faith with him, while there Biggie receives more death threats. Following a phone call to 'Lil Kim to apologise and arrange a meeting, Biggie leaves the party, he is shot and killed by an unknown gunman when getting into his car, his funeral is held a few days later, his friends, family and thousands of fans lining the street mourn, Biggie's song "Hypnotize" plays as his casket is driven down the city streets. Also starring Jasper Briggs as Damion (Age 8-13), Cyrus Farmer as Art Selwyn and Edwin Freeman as Mister Cee. Newcomer Woolard just about looks and sounds the part of the larger than life rap star, and there is good support from Bassett, Naughton and Wallace Jr. playing his own father as a young man. There are some memorable sequences, from sex scenes and of course the recognisable songs (I was hoping the Biggie Smalls tribute song "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy feat. Faith Evans and 112 would be included), but the script is full of the hip hop lifestyle clichés, and doesn't cover enough of the subjects we know about from the media, a not well executed but reasonable in parts biographical drama. Okay!

In 1997, Christopher Wallace aka rapper Biggie Smalls is gunned down. Back in 1983 Brooklyn, Christopher is a bright student with an overprotective mother (Angela Bassett). He decides to follow his friend D-Roc into selling crack hiding his gangster life from his mother. His girlfriend tells him she's pregnant. He start rhyming while selling crack eventually beating another guy in a street battle. His mother kicks him out and he gets thrown in prison. Eventually he gets signed by Puffy Combs (Derek Luke) and marries singer Faith Evans (Antonique Smith). His friendship with Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie) turns sour.This is a rather traditional music biopic. It could have been more intense considering the subject. It should have been more than a run-of-the-mill production. Jamal Woolard provides a charismatic center. Even his narrations are compelling. He's also joined by other good actors. I'm not convinced about Derek Luke but Angela Bassett is terrific.

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..

There is no doubt that this is a decent biopic. It covers the life of Notorious BIG and charts his hip hop career, creating a character that people can connect to and believe in. The musical side of the story is interesting, especially the representation of how BIG crafts his lyrics. However, it falls down on the representation of his home life. To be a genuine biopic, I would have expected the film to spend more time on his clearly troubled relationships, especially with women. It seems that the film is enamoured with the hip hop side, which is fine, but that would make it a musical biopic, not a genuine biopic of his life.On the whole, though, it is a enjoyable, interesting, kicking-back-on-Saturday-night-after-work film.