Soft-side of Notorious B.I.G. comes through in riveting new documentary

Home videos and heartfelt interviews merge with hair raising tales of life on the street to tell story of beloved rap star.

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, documentary, 1 hr, 37 m, now streaming on Netflix

Biggie: I got a Story to Tell, uses historic footage, concert film and present day interviews to create a riveting and satisfying documentary look at the short and impactful life of Chris Wallace, better known as revolutionary rapper, Notorious B.I.G or Biggie Smalls who died in a hail of bullets in an unsolved murder at the age of 24 in 1997.

There’s no attempt to sugar coat the thug life of young Biggie who straddled a life of crime and a life of rhyme throughout his handful of years. There is little finger-wagging as we are given an honest sense of Biggie’s choices and struggles growing up raised by a struggling and loving single mother in pre-gentrified Brooklyn of the 90s.

We see mentors gently trying to steer Biggie away from the life of street corner drug sales as well as testimony from the toughs who helped him successfully apply his entrepreneurial instincts into being a pusher. The film shines an unflinching light on the realities of a thug life the same way Biggie’s groundbreaking and sometimes disturbingly honest lyrics did.

Biggie is the latest doc to benefit from the increasingly available video technology. While still years away from the current, video-camera-in-every-phone days, accessible handy-cam technology means Biggie’s pals captured very early footage of Biggie rapping and  conducting verbal street battles. And once his star started to ascend, a member of Biggie’s crew basically filmed everything, not just stage performances but great shoots of ecstatic crowds as well as tons of behind-the-scenes footage.

Present day interviews with many key players in Biggie’s world, good influences and bad, give important context in understanding Biggie’s complex life. Interviews with his ever-loving mom, Jamaican-American Mom, Volletta Wallace, are especially informative and moving.

Sean Coombs/Puff Daddy/P. Diddy emerges as an early-believer in Biggie and it’s fascinating to hear him reveal his game plan for helping  Biggie turn into the internationally acclaimed artist he becomes.

But if you’re looking for a solution to a murder that, coupled with the killing of rival west coast rapper Tupac Shakur, just as the two of them were reaching the top, you’re out of luck.

As we see the Shakur and Biggie friendship sour, viewers can’t help hope for an outcome other than the tragedy that ultimately occurs.

Just as rap music was becoming the worldwide music phenomena that it is today, on it way to being the biggest genre on the planet that it now it is, the tragedy of two if its greatest stars being cut down in their prime, remains heartbreaking.

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell, not only powerfully tells the story of one man’s remarkable rise from the Mean Streets to mega-stardom and ultimately an untimely death, it is an effective social history on the life choices and challenges still confronting too many African-American youth today.