Director: George Tillman Jr.
Starring: Jamal Woolard, Mohamed Dione, Derek Luke
On DVD: TBA 

“It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine, Salt’n’Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine.”

 Cryptic? Maybe. But for rap fans, this is the sweet opening line of a Notorious B.I.G song featured in the recent biopic, Notorious.

 The film regales the story of Christopher Wallace, a crack dealer-cum-rapper whose meteoric rise to rap fame peaked at the time of (or perhaps shortly after) his assassination in 1997.

The Notorious B.I.G, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Big Poppa, was entrenched in the East Coast vs West Coast rap feud that became centred on his infamous falling out with Tupac ‘2pac’ Shakur.

Notorious takes us through the paces of Wallace’s early life, from his determination to skip school and make money through drugs, his decision to overcome his apparent nerdiness by adopting a tough-guy image, and his realisation that he can string a rhyme together.

In the last third of the film the focus shifts to the stress associated with being part of a media-bolstered rap feud, and a real effort to show what went on ‘behind the scenes’ in the B.I.G camp is evident.

The certainty with which the film gives its side of the story could have something to do with the fact that Notorious B.I.G’s former producer, Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, was involved in producing Notorious, as was Biggie’s former manager, Wayne Barrow.

The film keeps an even tempo, walking steadily through the events of Wallace’s life and trying (pretty successfully) to show the tension between glitz and glamour of being a rap star and the realities of relationships, kids, drugs and record contracts.

A problem with the movie is that parts of the plot often trail off inexplicably, only to be partly – and often inadequately – explained later.

Each of the three muses that come into Wallace’s life are the focus of his attentions for a short while, before inevitably being replaced.

This is more of a reflection on the man than the movie, but still, you spend a bit of time trying to work out how the plot fits together.

In spite of the significant softening of a person’s image that comes with a biopic and the shiny embellishments of cinema, it is pretty hard to like Notorious B.I.G, the man.

When you strip it down, he is a gun-toting, drug-dealing, self-centred womaniser who made it big by channeling these elements into a ‘tough’ image.

Still, the film does a pretty good job of taking you on the guided tour of his life.

Three stars.