My Review of "Biggie: I Have a Story to Tell"

Biggie: I Have a Story to Tell is a biography of Christopher Wallace better known as the Notorious B.I.G. A lot of us probably know of the rapper but this documentary goes into more details of how he was brought up. It's also one of Netflix's latest song writer biographies. They've been killing it with a lot of the biographies lately so I couldn't help but check this documentary out.

The whole documentary starts off pretty much at the end of Christopher's life. It is well documented that he had died at an early age of 24 back in 1997. Tragically it was right before the release of his much anticipated sophomore album "Life After Death". The irony of the title of his albums doesn't go unnoticed.

Still with such a short life he had done a lot in life and that's what this documentary wanted to explore. Here to narrate Christopher's life are some of his closest friends and his mother. It's actually a pretty interesting story but again it is quite a short life so all of their stories kind of intertwine with one another.

It's even more interesting because all of the stories take place in one borough in New York called Brooklyn. specifically a few streets within Brooklyn too. Christopher and most of his friends are all from this small little neighborhood in Brooklyn and they never really ventured off anywhere else.

That is except for his family that are from Jamaica. It seems as though Christopher was very close with his family and was greatly influenced by them. We dive into all of his musical influences in his family including his uncle that was an master of ceremonies himself.

They then delve into another childhood musical influence with one of his neighbors. He teaches Christopher about jazz and what makes music in jazz so great. I liked how they go into detail about Christopher's rap flow and how it related to the percussions of jazz music. These little tidbits are knowledge nuggets that we don't normally hear from anyone. It's good to hear about these different perspectives of his life.

The movie even goes into the dark stages of Christopher's life. As a kid growing up poor with little opportunities ahead of him he had to get himself into some pretty seedy things. Behind all of the criminal acts that he committed lied a good person. His intentions were always good but sometimes you have to do bad things in order to provide for the people you love. This was the case with a lot of Christopher's actions.

It's got some fun moments where some of the friends and Christopher's mom remember some of the hijinks that he was involved in. Some were more fun than others but they were consistent to what we hear from all of them. It's also really nice to see a lot of the home footage that was previously never seen. We see Christopher having fun with his friends and we also see some of the darker moments as well.

Overall, there is not a huge amount of content in this documentary but there is still a fair bit for a guy that only lived to the ripe age of 24. He lived quite a fascinating life and I would highly recommend this film to fans of the Notorious B.I.G. Otherwise, casual viewers may still find it interesting but I don't think they'll get quite as much of an impact watching this if they didn't know who the Notorious B.I.G. was. I have to give this documentary a 7 out of 10. It is worthy of watching if you're looking for a documentary to watch especially if you're a fan.