When I first heard “a movie is coming out about Biggie Smalls”, I laughed.
I asked my informant, “Why in the world would I want to pay to sit through a movie about some rapper?”
Later, I saw the previews and decided to see the movie. I think I changed my mind because I was intrigued by the thought of actors and actresses playing the parts of people I recognize whom are still alive and still in their careers (such as Faith Evans, P. Diddy, Lil Kim etc).
The movie exceeded my expectations in terms of acting and storyline; however, I was stunned at how ignorant “The Notorious B.I.G” was during his short lifetime. I didn’t expect him to be Einstein, but did he have to make decisions like a six month old child who looks in the mirror, walks away and forgets what he looks like? The entire movie –with the exception of the five minutes that he was in elementary school– it seemed he, like too many other black males in America, only wanted to make choices that led to one of two places in life: prison or the casket. His whole life was a case study in what not to do.
His life experiences represent everything that is wrong with Black America: teenage pregnancy, drugs, rebellion, high school dropout and prison. I left the movie more convinced than ever that Christopher Wallace was both a womanizer and a mediocre rapper ultimately slain by his own arrogance and stupidity.
I’ll never understand who thought it was a good idea to preface the historical event that was Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration with a movie about an increasingly irrelevant former hip-hop star. In the end, it’s all about the money, but the movie would’ve made money any weekend. Why release it that weekend?
Black people in this country really do not need another movie (true story or not) about black men being rappers and/or thugs who go to prison and/or get killed. Aren’t we over that narrative yet? Can’t we permanently move on from negative depictions that are portrayed as the norm, but really stand in stark contrast to all that we can be, will be and are as a people? Has change come to America, or not?
Of course, in the movie, Biggie pulled the tired “I had no father so I’m a thug” justification. Barack Obama didn’t have a father and he is the president of the United States. Next excuse?
In a country where more black children are born to unwed mothers than married parents, it is high time we abandon that defense and conscientiously choose something better for our lives and for our children’s lives. A father’s presence is of the utmost importance, but a person cannot justify going to prison because they didn’t have a father in the home.
My irreverent attitude toward “Biggie” might rub some people the wrong way, but I recently watched a black man be inaugurated as president of the United States and that means something to me. Among other things, it means it is a new day in Black America. Our problems aren’t over and our future is not secure, but I refuse to glorify a past in which many people couldn’t dream of seeing a black man in office. And I’m certainly not going to begin to esteem a lifestyle that sends too many black people to prison and the grave.
If “Notorious” showed us anything in the three days before Obama’s inauguration, it is that we needed January 20th more than we realized. Maybe now young black children can look past their street corners or BET’s Rap City for role models. What might Wallace’s life have been had he, instead of aspiring to own gold chains and white-on-white Nike Air Force Ones, aspired to graduate from Harvard Law School and become president of the United States like Barack Obama?
Wallace may not have reached that goal, but more than likely he would have lived long enough to try.
