I work at a theater, so I saw the movie. It's not a satisfying sit. They dissect his life but with a rusty fork. It's definitely a ploy to get cash. I don't see it as bettering his legacy at all. As far as his status as a rapper, I agree, he's definitely not the best rapper ever and yes he was mainstream, but here's the problem. I think we get too stuck in what is underground and what isn't underground and that when it's corporate it ain't real but when it's underground it always is. The Iseley brothers, Temptations, Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, ....all mainstream R&B and Soul singers, but they are legends. Is their shit not real, maybe, but is it not respectable because it's mainstream, not neccessarily. The best example is Marvin Gaye. Motown was the most mainstream soul label in the nation, yet he is notoriously respected. It's the same with other genres, rock - ZZ Top, Led Zepellin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ozzy, etc. It goes even further than that. Movie directors, actors, painters, novelists, poets, philosophers, and even athletes all fall into two categories. "A" list and "B" list. "A" being mainstream, "B" not being mainstream. But usually in those forms of occupation they are thought to be mainstream because they are good at what they do. And, well, isn't that how hip hop used to be. It would be different if Biggie was pulled out of the suburbs and turned into a street thug to sell albums. But he wasn't, he represented what was real and what he had to live in from where he came.
I can tell you some of the best actors of all time and some of the best directors of all time, were mainstream. Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian DePalma, Sydney Lumet, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Sergio Leone, Quentin Tarantino -all among the best directos of all time. Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep -all among the best actors of all time. And guess what, they were all mainstream.
You have to sit back and look at the whole picture through more than one perspective.
Do you think followers of those genres do what we sit here and do: scrutinize and criticize artists based on there merit of being underground or not. So what I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't be about mainstream or underground, it should be about real or fake. Biggie wasn't fake so he's got my respect. But originality is important to me. He wasn't that original as far as content, so there's no respect there. But! What he was trying to say was well expressed, so he gains more of my respect. Do you see where I'm going. He shouldn't be slapped with a label that says "mainstream" or, "corporate" especially. He should be analyzed as a human being and also as an artist based on the individual motives and attributes that compose him.
Basically he was mainstream because he knew he would have died in the streets. He was given a chance to make it big thanks to a little talent he had called rhyme. Puffy gave him that chance. When your dealing with life and death, you don't give a fuck about whats "mainstream" or "corporate." You just want to get the fuck out, by whatever means.
I thought yall would think a little deeper than what you have, at least something better than throwing around nothing but "mainstream," "underground," and "corporate."
Anyways, the movie isn't too good.
