Notorious tells the story of Biggie Small aka Notorious B.I.G. whose real name is Christopher Wallace. The movie begins with a drive-by shooting that murder the rapper and flashes back to his childhood. He listened to music on the radio and admired the rap groups in the magazines. Though he grew up without a father, his mother Voletta (Angela Bassett) makes sure he succeeds in school. Christopher (Jamal Woolard) grows up amongst the crack dealing streets, learning how the streets run. He is shown briefly in childhood practicing his rhymes and then as a teenager counting his money and changing his clothes after his mother thinks he leaves for school. He taunts his teacher and flirts with his girlfriend, finding out she's pregnant. On the corner, they sell crack and spit rhymes, beating a rival in a rap battle. When his mom kicks him out, he gets deeper into the crime, running other dealers and even selling to a pregnant woman. He finds himself in jail, asking his mom for trouble. Bored in prison, he writes out his story in rhymes until his release. Out of prison and needing to earn for his daughter, Biggie Small records his raps and brings them to Sean 'Puffy' Combs (Derek Luke). Puffy sees potential but gets fired before he can give Biggie a chance.Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

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..

Notorious is a nice, interesting biography that chronicles the life of Notorious B.I.G and his rise to fame and his downfall. I'm not a rap person at all, but the film has gotten me interested in the late 1990's battle between East Coast versus West Coast. All of this drama and rivalry is very intriguing and which resulted in the deaths of two talented rappers.George Tillman Jr's film is the story about B.I.G and how he grew up in the ghetto selling drugs to becoming a worldwide phenomenon who lost his life at the very young age of 24. This story also accounts for his friendship turned enemies in Tupac Shakur who also lost his life at a very young age.The acting is actually not too bad. I have never heard of Jamal Woolward before but he is pretty good as B.I.G. Anthony Mackie does a good job as Tupac. Angela Bassett is really good as B.I.G's mother who cares for him very much.Overall, this is a solid biography that may teach you a thing or two. I wasn't as moved as most people but that is because this is not my kind of music at all. But it's still worth a watch just for seeing what an interesting character B.I.G was. I rate this film 8/10.

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.