![]() When he was little, Voletta did not allow Biggie to traverse past nearby Fulton Street, where the neighborhood dealers operated. Friends Suif Jackson and Michael Abrahams recall tales of a wily and ambitious Biggie bound to outgrow the world around him. The landscape of late ’80s and early ’90s Brooklyn holds similar weight. To explain the artist’s virtuosity on the mic, viewers are furnished with stories of Biggie bringing music back to the States after summers in Jamaica and late nights spent at kickbacks with family members. As a child, he is imbued with a touch of melomania-at once a fan of country Western ballads, island dancehall grooves, sultry R&B, and bruising ’80s hip-hop. Her son’s status as a first-generation American is foregrounded throughout the narrative. That was not my life.”īehind the Thong: Sisqó on His Biggest Hit and How the Music Industry Works “I did not see that in the country for me. A lady of means with three children,” Voletta says early in the film. ![]() “I always daydream of being a filthy rich lady. I Got a Story to Tell tracks her roots in rural Jamaica and the dilemma she faced in choosing whether to build a life at home or chase the allure of American opportunity. If there is a central figure in the documentary besides Biggie, it’s Voletta, who takes up the most interview time of any subject. It goes through a great deal to prove that point, beginning with the rapper’s origin. I Got a Story to Tell wants viewers to believe that how he lived and how we remember his life makes his death, if not less brutal, then less final. But the motivation at the heart of the film is the same as other works related to the rapper. This level of access and the film’s commitment to interviews from those who knew Biggie best make it an upgrade from preceding efforts. It is executive produced by both Combs and the MC’s mother, Voletta Wallace. ![]() I Got a Story to Tell includes previously unseen archival footage provided by Biggie’s lifelong friend Damion Butler. As a result, the works made in his honor are often sticky and flawed attempts at grappling with a profound tragedy in a culture with an aversion to the mere language of death. Has anyone ever really been better at the sport of rap than Biggie Smalls? Has anyone ever had a more natural proclivity toward the rhythm and sounds of the genre? To know that such a being existed and was slain so young is to behold the terrifying and unsettling truth that this world may not adhere to reason. The volume is understandable considering the man in question. Released Monday, I Got a Story to Tell is one of several grasps at closure since Biggie’s death-a litany of content that includes Life After Death, other posthumous releases, books, and documentaries, and, in 2009, an ill-received but estate-approved biopic, Notorious. “His story,” Diddy says, “doesn’t have to be a tragedy.” It’s a statement that has a tinge of uncertainty. The suggestion is that because of this, a part of Biggie did too. The MC’s physical being may have been laid to rest, but his music and memory lived. Bystanders radiated praise, thanks, joy, and love-as Big once chronicled. There was a procession after the service, a pilgrimage through Brooklyn. (“It felt like everyone wanted to give up,” Combs says.) Yet, he recalls, a balm did eventually arrive. Solemn undersells the pain surrounding Biggie’s funeral. ![]() “I never knew that you could feel so sad, or feel so hurt, or feel so empty,” Sean Combs says in the opening moments of the new Netflix documentary Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell. It was a sequel to his 1994 debut, Ready to Die. His final album, which dropped 16 days later, had already been titled Life After Death. Four bullets entered his body but one alone struck the fatal blow, ravaging his heart, lungs, and liver. The rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or quite simply, Big, was 24 when a vehicle ambushed and shot through the passenger side of the dark-green GMC Suburban he was riding in, on March 9, 1997. The fact that Christopher Wallace often toyed with death did not make his demise any easier to understand.
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