Friday, Notorious B.I.G. fans worldwide got to celebrate the life and death of one of the most influential hip hop lyricists of all time with the release of “Notorious.” Christopher “Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G.”
Friday, Notorious B.I.G. fans worldwide got to celebrate the life and death of one of the most influential hip hop lyricists of all time with the release of “Notorious.” Christopher “Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace was gunned down before he could reach the age of 25, unlike his rumored enemy or friend (depending on who you ask), Tupac Shakur, who was killed at age 25.
In “Notorious,” executive produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs and produced by Biggie’s mother, Voletta Wallace, among others, viewers get to see the beginning camaraderie between Tupac and Biggie before the East Coast/West Coast rivalries that the media helped instigate and rappers sometimes confirmed, musically.
The audience sees a young Biggie’s (played by Biggie’s real son, Christopher Jordan Wallace) rap career amped up by his deadbeat father coming and going into his and Voletta Wallace’s (Angela Bassett) lives. While the boys on his block wore new gym shoes and name-brand clothes, Biggie was not. As do many young men in the hood, the glorious life sparked his attention and off he went into the drug game, following the pattern of his childhood friend, D-Roc (Dennis L.A. White), 13 years old and hungry. But Biggie got caught and locked up, missing out on memories of his newborn daughter, T’yanna (Denae Innis), not too long after hearing the news of Jan’s (Julia Pace Mitchell), his teenage girlfriend, pregnancy.
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