Life After Death With Notorious Big Movie
Important Era in Hip Hop and Rap Music Come to Life
Jan 25, 2009
Above all, the Notorious movie about music and its transformative influence on a generation of street youth during the 1980s and 1990s. It serves as a type of morality lesson to the perils of big dreams of a street-level music rapper that turn tragic when life’s balance tips in favor of money, power and exploitation.
The Notorious BIG, otherwise known as Biggie Smalls and born as Christopher Wallace, is a hip-hop and rap music icon. Today, more music has been released since his death than while he was living including a greatest hits compilation in March 2007 and the posthumous releases of the 1999 double platinum "Born Again" and the 2005 "Duets: The Final Chapter."
Notorious BIG Life After Death Remains Strong in Hip Hop and Rap Music Scene
Before his death in 1997 at the age of 24, Biggie released just one hit album. The second, released two weeks after his death and prophetically named “Life After Death,” went on to sell 10 million copies.
The concert scenes are the movie’s best feature. Biggie had a lightening effect on his audiences, who switched into pulsating crowds at the feet of the master. His MTV appearances added to the popularity of hip hop and rap music as a hypnotizing sub-genre.
However, Notorious does not idolize either the movie’s namesake, those around him or the context of the hip hop and rap music scene's senselessly violent and male-dominated lifestyle at the time.
For his part, Biggie is portrayed initially as street-level drug dealer in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a loving yet oblivious mother. Biggie’s real passion is rapping on the streets to impress his friends and win in fierce verbal battles.
Music Rapper Drawn to Fast Money, Power
The lure of money and its ability to give power, clothes and friends wins him over as a pre-teen. Despite his intelligence, portrayed during a classroom scene when he answers an algebra question at the chalkboard and his famous sense of humor shines through, Biggie accepts the trap of easy, plentiful money by selling crack cocaine on the streets.
To demonstrate how this choice took at quick, downward spiral, several scenes show the subtle handshake pass of drugs for cash, with Biggie surprising even his fellow drug dealers by selling crack to a pregnant “customer” when they would not.
Death of Notorious BIG Blamed on Rivalry Between Rap Singers
His overnight rise as a pioneer rapper takes place at the hands of record producer Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy or P. Diddy. Biggie would become the flagship artist of Comb’s Bad Boy Records.
Biggie raps his way deep into the music and drug scene however, it is the intensity of the battle, both in words and deeds, between Biggie and fellow music rapper Tupac Shakur that would be the downfall of both men.
When Shakur is shot and injured during a Manhattan studio shooting and blames Biggie and his people, it sets off a war that pits the rap scenes in the East coast against the West coast. Shakur is later fatally shot during a 1996 drive-by shooting and Biggie dies in the same fate just six months later. Both crimes remain unsolved.
The movie portrays no involvement on Biggie’s part in either of the Shakur shootings. However, this film hold no illusions about the rapper’s lifestyle or infidelity (he has an ongoing relationship with rap’s Lil' Kim during his marriage to singer Faith Evans).
The Notorious movie contributes to the artist’s living legacy, acting as a tribute to his ongoing influence in pop culture. The movie keeps alive the roots of rap music and the rags to riches persona that so characterized Biggie's meteorite rise from the streets of Brooklyn to the penthouse suite.
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