SOHH Squad reviews Netflix's Biggie: I Got a Story To Tell. Is it worth the watch or just another B.I.G. story rehashed?
@Netflix @NotoriousBIG
@Netflix @NotoriousBIG
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00:00 (logo whooshing)
00:02 - Yo, what's up y'all?
00:05 It's So.com and I'm here with Trenton and I'm Steve.
00:10 And we're about to start talking about the Netflix Biggie,
00:16 I Got a Story to Tell piece
00:17 that just came out a couple of days ago.
00:19 - Big bad.
00:21 - All right.
00:22 So Trenton, you're from the West Coast, right?
00:25 So like, what was it like hearing about,
00:28 like, you know, your perspective of Biggie
00:30 is probably different from mine.
00:31 I'm from the Bronx.
00:32 So it was just like, you know, like,
00:35 you know, it wasn't like a bad thing.
00:38 It was like, okay, my favorite rappers at that time
00:41 might've been like Lord Finesse,
00:42 Andre the Giant and stuff like that.
00:44 What was the impact of Big over there?
00:48 - The impact of Big at the time in like '94,
00:51 here on the West Coast, it was still huge,
00:54 but there was still a lot of hate and animosity
00:56 that people held towards Biggie
00:59 and just bad boy in general,
01:00 like a lot of bad boy artists
01:01 because of that whole East Coast, West Coast rivalry
01:04 that was going on during those times.
01:06 You couldn't turn a corner without, you know,
01:08 somebody quoting Pac lyrics.
01:09 And it was few and far between where we would find each other
01:13 who was actually listening to things like Biggie
01:16 and Craig Mack.
01:17 But as far as his impact on the people,
01:21 nobody could deny that album when it dropped,
01:24 the man was like top tier with lyrics at the time.
01:27 Like nobody was like touched.
01:29 And I mean, even the stuff that Pac was doing,
01:31 they told the same similar stories,
01:32 but the way they saw these things,
01:34 maybe it was the people they were around,
01:35 their environments, whatever it was,
01:39 it gave them both their unique styles
01:41 that people, that spoke to everybody though,
01:44 is the thing.
01:45 It's like something about the words they chose
01:47 or the flow that they had spoke to everybody.
01:49 Everybody heard it.
01:52 Everybody heard it from like people in the street
01:56 and then, you know, people that was in a boardroom,
01:59 like you started getting attention.
02:02 Both of them started making a lot of attention.
02:03 So I think the impact was huge.
02:07 - It's funny because when the Chronic dropped,
02:11 I was excited.
02:13 I mean, especially after they had just dropped the album,
02:17 the last album that Dre did with NWA.
02:19 And I thought, honestly, I think that album
02:23 is better than the Chronic,
02:25 but the Chronic is like the thriller to hip hop.
02:29 Whereas Niggas for Life is the off the wall.
02:32 I had to make that comparison.
02:34 - Right, right.
02:35 - And we liked a lot of the West Coast stuff
02:39 out here in New York.
02:41 You know, the animosity really,
02:44 you know, it was definitely,
02:48 it wasn't propaganda, but it was like,
02:51 it didn't exist.
02:52 You know, we knew who Spice One was.
02:54 We knew who Hyperglyphics was.
02:55 We knew Project was the issue alone and stuff like that.
03:00 You know, that wasn't like, that wasn't foreign to us.
03:03 You know, it was just like,
03:04 but it wasn't in every record store.
03:07 You know what I'm saying?
03:09 Stuff that we were familiar with was in the record store.
03:13 Let's talk about the Netflix show that we watched.
03:16 Biggie, I got a story to tell.
03:18 I wasn't gonna, I'll be honest,
03:19 I was not gonna watch it.
03:21 - What? You weren't gonna watch it at all?
03:24 - I was just like,
03:25 how many more Biggie stories can we endure?
03:29 You know?
03:30 So, you know, I just felt like,
03:31 all right, what's gonna make this different?
03:33 And I guess within the first five minutes,
03:36 you find out that his right-hand man, D-Rock,
03:40 had all the video footage.
03:42 And that's what made it different, you know?
03:44 So if you weren't thinking about seeing
03:46 Biggie, I Got a Story to Tell,
03:48 I would highly suggest watching it
03:50 because it is a lot of new footage
03:52 that has never been seen.
03:54 - So it'd be bananas to think about,
03:56 where would Big stuff go
03:59 if he would have been able to keep making music?
04:02 - Right, right, right.
04:03 Well, it's definitely a life cut too short.
04:06 I mean, Tupac died at 25 and Big was 24.
04:09 At 24, I was starting sohh.com.
04:13 And I'm just like, wow, like, yeah, that's interesting.
04:17 You know, I turned 50 this year.
04:19 Big would have been about 49, 50.
04:22 He probably would have had businesses
04:25 and a lot of different things and such.
04:27 And it's like, wow, yo, his life got cut short.
04:30 Really,
04:31 ah, it's devastating.
04:35 - Another thing about this documentary that I appreciated
04:38 was the way that they rocked the timeline.
04:41 Like, I really felt watching it
04:43 that it was easy for me to follow.
04:45 Like, they took me from Big's childhood
04:48 and then brought me all the way up.
04:51 It was like I was with Junior Mafia,
04:53 just watching it happen and growing and everything.
04:55 - I think one of the illest pieces
04:57 was when they went to Jamaica
04:59 and you got to meet Big's grandmother.
05:02 And I think she was 95 in the footage.
05:07 And I'm trying to, I was trying to figure out
05:10 whether that was current footage
05:12 or whether that was old footage from then.
05:15 But I mean, to wake up one day
05:18 and see that your grandson,
05:20 your own, you know, your grandson is dead,
05:22 must be devastating.
05:25 - That's gotta be a harsh reality
05:27 that hopefully a lot of people don't have to go through.
05:30 - Mother was 16 when she had him.
05:32 And they saved that for the very, very end.
05:36 And I was just sitting there like,
05:38 16, pregnant, you know, like,
05:42 and you can see that she was a hard worker.
05:45 I mean, she was trying to keep him in the good schools.
05:48 She tried to put him in a decent neighborhood
05:50 and everything, but,
05:51 and as I'm learning right now as a dad,
05:55 that that really doesn't matter.
05:56 You know, you can do the best for your kids.
05:58 Your kids, they just gonna have a mind of their own.
06:01 This piece humanized him
06:03 and it really gave us a good look into how he came up.
06:08 He lived not too far from that.
06:09 I forgot who the jazz guy was,
06:11 but there was a jazz guy.
06:12 - Donald Harrison, he grew up on the same block with Big.
06:15 So yeah, they were saying that Big is seeing a man
06:19 coming in and out.
06:20 I mean, he was a few years older than Big
06:21 'cause he was an established jazz musician already
06:24 and had already been playing with like, big names.
06:27 Big saw a dude coming in with girls and flash
06:29 and all of that.
06:31 For too long, Big made his way.
06:33 He started talking to him,
06:34 got to know the dude, helped him like,
06:37 open his mind to a whole different like,
06:39 cultural musics and stuff that
06:41 Big might not have been exposed to yet.
06:44 So, it's pretty dope.
06:46 - Years ago, I think around the time when Biggie had passed,
06:50 I was talking to my brother-in-law
06:52 and he's like a musician.
06:53 And he said that he liked Biggie
06:55 because he sounded like an instrument on the track.
06:58 He wasn't just rapping, but he was like an instrument.
07:03 And he said to me, this was 25 years ago,
07:06 he said, "It wouldn't surprise me if Big was a musician."
07:11 Now, a lot of people, you know, when we talk about Rakim,
07:14 we don't talk about Rakim being a saxophone player.
07:17 So, you know, there's more to Rakim
07:22 than just, oh, he writes dope rhymes.
07:24 It's really about how he connects the rhymes to the beat.
07:28 And in the documentary,
07:30 they actually show you how Big had that bebop style of rap.
07:35 You know, and I was sitting there like, wow, like,
07:39 this is kind of deep.
07:40 Like, he was a lot smarter than, you know,
07:43 we give him credit for.
07:45 - It's interesting to know that he had
07:47 some form of musical background that way.
07:49 Your brother's analogy,
07:51 I could hear Big's voice on these songs.
07:53 And yeah, his dynamics are amazing, man.
07:56 Like, for some reason, his breath control worked out so well
08:01 that his delivery was like, this is intense.
08:05 It was pretty intense.
08:06 You could feel it.
08:06 - So, you know, I think hats off to Viola
08:09 for like really nurturing him
08:11 and really trying to do the best that she could for him at,
08:13 you know, starting at 16 and, you know, working her way.
08:17 I will say that the piece, you know, it humanized him.
08:22 It showed you more of his process.
08:25 And you'll definitely get a better appreciation
08:30 for Biggie if you didn't have one already.
08:33 - It's only about an hour and a half long.
08:34 It's easy to digest.
08:35 And yeah, like you said, it made Big relatable.
08:39 In '94, when "Ready to Die" dropped,
08:42 I was sophomore in high school.
08:44 So for me, it was hard for us to get a hold
08:47 of some East Coast rap where we was at
08:50 because the mom and pop stores over here
08:52 was all pushing all the local stuff.
08:54 It was harder for us to come across some of the gems
08:56 that was coming out over at that time from the East Coast.
09:00 The documentary is definitely where we're checking out.
09:02 And yeah, you're going to find out something new.
09:04 Like no idea that there's Big knew a jazz musician at all.
09:07 I never knew.
09:08 - You know, sometimes we downplay the experiences
09:10 that we have as kids.
09:11 You know, we don't really look at them as building blocks.
09:14 You know what I'm saying?
09:15 I think D-Rock at one point said,
09:17 "Yo, I'm really not trying to hear you."
09:19 You know, like, "You got it, you got it real good."
09:21 You know, 'cause it wasn't like Big was poor.
09:23 You know, he just wanted to make money fast.
09:26 It was interesting also,
09:27 I think they had Little C's on there.
09:29 Oh, that was a good story about how it was, man,
09:32 they really brought him up, you know,
09:34 got killed or whatever.
09:35 And I think that was the turning point for him.
09:38 And they showed a lot, Gutter, C. Gutter.
09:40 I guess that's the guy who throws the kids over the bridge
09:44 in "Life After Death."
09:45 (laughs)
09:46 - Yo, as soon as they showed C. Gutter,
09:48 I was like, "No way, man, that can't be that kid."
09:51 And then the lyric played in my head
09:52 and I was like, "Ugh."
09:54 - Yeah, it was a good piece.
09:56 I definitely would say, if you're watching this right now,
09:59 we're telling you, you should go watch it.
10:02 It's not gonna be your everyday Biggie Smalls video.
10:05 They don't go into like who killed him and all of that stuff.
10:08 They really just talk about,
10:09 it's from his birth all the way to his death.
10:12 That's it.
10:14 And they don't really sugarcoat it, you know.
10:15 You see Diddy in there,
10:17 you see quite a few people or whatever
10:20 that you'll recognize.
10:21 All right, y'all, that's it for today.
10:23 If you got time, an hour and 37 minutes, go watch "Biggie."
10:27 I got a story to tell on Netflix.
10:29 It's not bad, it's a really good watch.
10:30 You'll love it.
10:31 Make sure you click the like and subscribe.
10:33 And hopefully me and Trenton will get together
10:35 and we'll start talking about some other things
10:37 like "WandaVision," "Falcon and the Winter Soldier,"
10:40 all that good stuff.
10:42 All right, y'all, later.
10:43 Yeah, that's it.
10:44 Think we should do the ending over?
10:46 (gentle music)
10:48 (upbeat music)