NOTORIOUS

Today’s rap and R&B music is a joke. It is an embarrassment on an art form that was born out of pain and poverty and desolation. The idiots that currently enjoy great wealth and fame by stepping on the back of rap – Lil Wayne and the ilk just like him – would do themselves a great deal of good by taking a look at a movie that chronicles the life of one of the genre’s true stars.

Notorious B.I.G. came into the rap scene just as it was beginning to be exploited by mainstream record labels. Prior to his emergence, rap was an art form for expressive poets eager to tell their true stories and relate their experiences. While MTV promoted worthless rap like Vanilla Ice and early Beastie Boys, the true artists were toiling away at their craft and creating the standards by which all others would be judged. Pioneers like NWA, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash, and The Furious Five stretched and defined the boundaries of the emerging genre, communicating the truth about lives damaged and destroyed in the projects.

The new film about the life and death of rapper Biggie Smalls, Notorious, takes up from these pioneers, showing us rap as it turned from an outlet of expression into a way out of the streets. The film shows Biggie as a kid, struggling to avoid the life of drugs and crime that surround him. His mother, played by Angela Bassett, tries to instill religion into the boy as she watches over him closely. Still, the streets and the lure of easy money snags Biggie, and soon he finds himself in prison for drug dealing. In desperation, Biggie utilizes his rapping skill to impress rap entrepreneur Puff Daddy and gain a recording contract. Soon, money and women and fame are his for the taking, all of which threaten to tear his life apart.

The film has a striking look, with deep cinematography and the flashy editing of a music video. In many films, this would be a drawback, but it perfectly enhances this story of hip hop success. It accentuates the shallowness and surface sheen that typified much of nineties rap music, which itself relied far too heavily on nonsensical videos that glorified wealth and scantily-clad women. The direction by George Tillman Jr. keeps events moving nicely, although a bit more focus on certain characters and scenes might have helped orient those not overly familiar with the players and the story.

As Biggie, Jamal Woolard captures Biggie’s laid-back persona well. A nearly perfect physical match, Woolard takes great care to emulate Biggie’s rap and stage persona; he also does well in the slower, more personal scenes of reflection. It’s not a perfect performance, but it is enough to carry this film with his presence. Much of the rest of the cast struggles to raise their real-life characters above the level of caricature. Most depressing is the depiction of Tupac Shakur, easily the most interesting and talented artist in Biggie’s life; Anthony Mackietries to emulate Tupac’s easy charm and excitability, but he is lost in the din of the movie. While Antonique Smith does justice to the nicely-written role of Faith Evans, Naturi Naughton’s Lil Kim is written as borderline psychotic with a performance to match.

Much of the problem with the film comes from the screenplay by Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker. The narration device utilized quickly becomes annoying (Biggie is telling us his life, essentially) and is used intermittently, without much of a sense of pacing. The dialogue is cliched beyond words, filled with clunky foreshadowing and homilies. But the worst crime of all comes from the characterizations of many famous people, almost all of whom are given short thrift and are barely developed. The film jerks forward in time without a sense of rythm, easily disorienting those not familiar with the situation. The net effect of this is a film that feels like a Saturday Night Live skit in which the Not Ready For Prime Time Players portray Biggie Smalls and the famous people in his life. Ohh look, that’s Puffy Combs! Oooh, man … that’s Suge Knight! These people should be meaningful to a large segment of the audience, yet they feel barely sketched.

The film succeeds in painting a picture of the life Biggie lived and how it motivated him to seek a better life in rap music. It also successfully and painfully reveals the problems of African American youths and their misguided pursuit of shallow goals and achievements. But a film about Biggie Smalls and his rise to prominence held the promise of a deeper and more meaningful story, a promise that continues to go unfulfilled.