The music video, at least within the hip hop community, has always been a venue for autobiographical fiction. Everything is exaggerated and enhanced to surreal degrees of decadence or poverty, but always based on some fundamental truths about the lives of the people involved. Notorious, a biopic about Biggie Smalls of “The Notorious B.I.G.” fame, signifies the move of this aesthetic and tone to the feature length form. It becomes swiftly apparent that this move was not for the best. All the tropes that inform the formerly three-minute genre, when stretched to 120 minutes fall apart. The fast cutting becomes sloppy. The heavy use of filters hurts the eyes. The exaggerated truth becomes egregious lies.
While ostensibly an attempt at some reflection of the truth of Biggie’s life, it is obvious from the first flash cut frame that this is not about the man but his myth. Biggie Smalls—martyr to rap. Among the lengthy executive producers list for Notorious sit the names of his mother Voletta Wallace, Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, and two former managers. Their level of involvement becomes hilariously transparent as we get to see the story of troubled genius Biggie weather the hate of everyone in the world barring his four near-godlike supporters—Puffy, his mother and managers, who are practically saints. With such bias being so evident, one is forced to question everything retold in the film, which becomes quite trying.
Another issue with Notorious is the level of knowledge that it assumes of the audience. To get anything close to a full understanding of the film, one needs an encyclopaedic knowledge of the work, life and times of Biggie. It assumes the audience is well aware of and in full awe of Biggie’s genius—how else did it plan to get away with extended sequences of him listening to his own music yelling about how much of a genius he is?
Also, its attempted moralising is constantly fogged by its typical glamorisation of gangster life. At one point, having yelled “Fuck you, bitch!” at Lil Kim on the phone, he tells his daughter the most important advice he could ever give her. “Never let a man call you a bitch.” Which is just… WTF?
There is already one film about Biggie Smalls, Nick Broomfield’s Biggie and Tupac, and while far from perfect, it is much more worthy of your time than this ridiculous fantasy.
Directed by George Tilman, Jr
Written by Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker
With Jamal Woolard, Derek Luke and Angela Bassett