I have a story to tell achieves something noticeably more astute than the ordinary Biggie murder story
Photo: George DuBose
At the heart of “Juicy”, one of hip-hop’s most indelible anthems from poverty to wealth, is the worldwide joy of a black boy from Brooklyn realizing that his dreams are finally within reach. The cadence in the 21-year-old Notorious BIG’s voice while detailing the improvements in quality of life that the new fame allowed – a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis, a good television and a leather sofa to watch, champagne bottles ready – it’s perfectly contagious. The ostentations are modest, signs of the desolation of the prospects for young people in the city center who did not come from great possessions, many of whom would never find opportunities to experience the world of the streets on which they grew up. : As with the early gems of rap, like “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, “Feel the Heartbeat” by the treacherous, or Funky 4 + 1 “That’s the Joint” and “Rappin and Rocking the House “,” Juicy “raises its unstoppable repeats a popular barbecue anthem,” Juicy Fruit “, from New York post-disco icons, Mtume, reimagining the artist’s childhood music as a launching pad for more adult concerns. What defines the Ready to die In addition to similar moments of pride throughout the history of hip-hop, it is that, at the time of recording, things were not yet “good” for Biggie.
He started working with an impressive variety of cameos in the summer of 1994, when he released the lead single from his debut album, mainly in remixes for Bad Boy and Uptown Records affiliates Craig Mack and Mary J. Blige in “Flava in Ya Ear, ”“ Real Love ”and“ What’s the 411? ”He had already shone in“ Party and Bullshit ”in 1993 and stole the show in“ A Bunch of Niggas ”, let alone the Heavy D and the highlight of the Boyz Blue funk. He had been in The source, the hip-hop bible of the 20th century, in 1992, thanks to its impressive demo tape. He didn’t have a successful album yet or any certainty that rap would be a lucrative career decision. Listening to “Juicy” in retrospect, it is easy to forget that the rap phenomenon born in Christopher Wallace was still dealing drugs between sessions for Ready to die, so convincing was his confidence and presence. He was calling his chance, however. In fact, “Juicy” is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Biggie was just 24 when he was shot dead in Los Angeles in early 1997 on the night of that year’s Soul Train Awards, and the circumstances of his death have long haunted his life story. He beat with chilling frankness about suicidal thoughts and threats against his life. There are those who think that he must have had premonitions that he would not stay long on earth (although that does not explain why he placed himself in the city where he would be most hated a few months after his friend became – rival 2pac was killed at the height of devastating war between the east and west coasts of hip-hop). We see Biggie as a poet of the determined and oppressed, an arrogant ex-boy who captured the dark realities of the street in novelistic details and for whom death was just another fact of life. It is an image corroborated by the man himself in conversations like the one in November 1994 Interview magazine article where he tells rap journalist Havelock Nelson that he is “immune” to hearing about people being killed, an extremely dark thing for a 22-year-old to say and an astute, quasi-political assessment of the universality of suffering at the center of city in one was where New York City registered an average of 2,500 homicides a year (a rate almost five times higher than today). We celebrate Biggie’s impact on the rap images and sounds, in the elegant, mafia style he preferred and in the way his impeccable streams and suspenseful stories built on the gains made by Golden Age big names like Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap were inspired by Heavy D’s “overweight lover” concept and inspired colleagues like Jay-Z and successors like Pusha T. But what we miss when we remember Biggie is the truth that, however much he was a tragic figure, he was a bright young dreamer, a loving father and a loyal friend whose primary motivation was to make life better for his family and friends in the neighborhood use his star power to elevate. The new Netflix documentary I have a story to tell breaks the tradition by pushing death to the margins and, instead, focus on the hopes and dreams of a brilliant mind that is gone too soon.
I have a story to tell it is a kind of social history of Notorious BIG and the world he inhabited, in turn a history class about a first generation Jamaican immigrant and how that experience would color his life’s work and also a clinic of how geographic proximity and interests ordinary scenes can be born. The doctor postulates Biggie as an intersection where several disparate paths meet and then goes out to see where some of them lead. At the cost of skipping memorable performances – like the day in 1995 when Wallace sang “Juicy” and “Big Poppa” on MTV’s holiday edition of The Grind wearing a Coogi sweater in Lake Havasu, Arizona, heat or the unforgettable Bad Boy showcase at that year’s Source Awards, a contentious night in east-west rap, but also where BIG cleaned up, taking home New Artist, Lyricist, Performer trophies live and album of the year – I have a story to tell visualizes the artist’s doing more than undoing it. Colorful characters on the outskirts of Wallace, like Lil Cease from Junior MAFIA and C-Gutta (who should you remember as the kidnapper in “What’s Beef?” Or the friend selling blue blouses in Jay-Z’s “Brooklyn’s Finest” or bodyguards for Lil Kim, who made an offer 16 years after the Hot 97 shootout in 2001), get extra face time. Home movies of Biggie’s friend, D-Roc, mix with interviews from close people and family members to paint a more complete picture than we know.
This direction humanizes Biggie and absolves I have a story to tell the predictable speed of most musical documentaries, ranging from talk-head testimonials and archival footage, telling a story in chronological and quick order and, in the case of legends that are no longer with us (like Frank Zappa, who was honored last year at Alex Winter’s brilliant Zappa), allowing changes in the tides of the artists’ destiny to lead the films themselves from joy to pain. I have a story to tell begins with a news camera footage of the hearse driving BIG’s coffin through a crowd of fans in Brooklyn, but does not return to him until the last few minutes. Among these book supports, we learned about the dream of living in the big city that led a young Voletta Wallace to move from Jamaica to the United States, the attraction of recognition in the busy corners of Fulton Street, where BIG participated in the rap games and crack, and the set of circumstances under which the forming rapper received a demo tape in the hands of Harlem rap manager Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. Some of these details are relayed out of order, and the doctor highlights some details that might otherwise have been lost in time. An aside in an interview where we learned that Voletta preferred country music to rap is chased to its roots in the history of Jamaican radio, and we also discovered that Biggie sometimes used country as a sleeping pill. (Meeting your uncle in Jamaica, whose musical tastes impacted the rapper, is a delight; instantly, you understand why there are pato gifts in Ready to die‘Respect’. It wasn’t just the custom of the 90s or the tacit recognition of Caribbean sounds in the DNA of hip-hop, he was an artist connecting with his own culture and history.) Jazz musician and occasionally Art Blakey companion Donald Harrison tells the story of Clinton Hill as a Brooklyn artistic center remembers receiving young Christopher and teaching him about art, establishing the most open musicological moment in the film, as it is suggested that the BIG path with words descends from jazz, and a rap is accompanied by a drum solo by the bandleader and former Charlie Max Roach, Parker collaborator.
History and theory are revitalizing, but seeing Christopher Wallace at times when he didn’t have to use his life-altering ego, splashing his chest on the back of a suffocating tour bus or pestering friends on his hotel rooms, which offers a touching contrast to the crazy he was on record and the tragic figure he has become in our shared memories.
But he still feels like a ghost in the machine. His reign was short. He died before he could really start to remain in his legend, erased at the beginning of what should have been a series of powerful albums, like Scott La Rock, like Big L, like Nipsey Hussle, like Pop Smoke. To know them is to imagine what they could have become. Listening is asking yourself why it is always those who are trying to strengthen themselves who are eliminated before carrying out their plans. To remember them is to set aside, even for a short time, the incessant and immutable reality of black death in America, to steal a jewel of joy from the darkness. I have a story to tell he does not get to comment openly on the political climate that drives this cycle, leaving the letters of the BIG to dispense with this message and highlighting more unusual points. He achieves something remarkably more astute than an ordinary Biggie murder story. That said, it helps to be familiar with the relevant points in your bio and catalog before watching, because I have a story to tell it is more a document of the long months when fame was not right for Wallace than a portrait of the abrupt deluge of fortune and misfortune that followed. Likewise, the most uplifting points in “Juicy” are about leaving the NYCHA house behind and appearing in the rap magazines he loved when he grew up. I have a story to tell it is an essential visualization, as long as you are the type of person who can rap in the first verse of “Hypnotize” from memory. You go out wishing BIG could have dreamed bigger.