Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell

This version of the life story of Christopher Wallace focuses primarily on his early life. We really get a sense of what his teens and early 20s were like through the interviews with his mother and friends and the amazing archival footage (shot by one of Biggie’s crew, Damion ”D-Roc” Butler).

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Puff Daddy, who was Biggie's friend and the owner of his label, Bad Boy Records, has quite a lot of screen time in this. The 90s footage shows that Puff was a creep even back then.

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I found the comments made by his mother, Voletta Wallace, to be the most interesting angle of this telling of Christopher’s story.

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Because she held down a 9 to 5 job, Biggie’s mother was clueless to what he was up to most of the time (even throwing away some crack he’d made thinking it was aging mashed potatoes). I admire that she had clear boundaries and expectations for him. When she did discover that he’d been making drugs in her house, she kicked him out. When she heard from a friend that he was cursing in his music, she chastised him. In response, he said something like "my music ain’t for you, don’t listen to it". And she didn’t!

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The documentary spends some time on Biggie’s relationship to Tupac, suggesting that there was a connection between the shooting of both men, so it seems strange that it completely omits any kind of recognition of his marriage to Faith Evans and his affair (and almost child) with 'Lil Kim. Those women were a big part of his life and career!

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Once we understand that renowned pervert and misogynist Sean Combs is one of the executive producers of this documentary, it makes sense that the influence of those women were left out.

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At the end of this, when Voletta talks about the funeral and the neighborhood’s reaction to her son’s death, she shares that she sat down and listened to all of his music - once and once only. She said she had no interest in listening to it ever again. (!!) Is that excellent boundaries or conditional love? It’s almost as if she only wanted to know certain aspects of her son, not the entirety of who he was.

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