BROOOOOOOOOOKKKKLLLLYYYNNNNNNNN!!!! PT.1

Notorious

I just came from seeing the movie Notorious, which is like officially sold out throughout the 5 boros. First off I don't see how a movie exec could think this is a good weekend to put their movie out. Like there has been sooo much hype and wait for this movie and all of us shocked it actually happened. 

My opinion might be biased but overall, I enjoyed the movie so go see it. But I don't know why I enjoyed the movie. I don't know if  I enjoyed the movie because it reminded of when it was all good in the rap game (literally, good music, good times, good artist) or if I enjoyed it because I knew the plot and story line. 

HOWEVER, I thought there were some inconsistencies or rather

things missing from the movie. For instance where was CHARLIE BALTIMORE. She was one of Big's infamous pieces of ass in the industry. Jay-Z was not present nor mentioned. Also what the hell happened to Mary, Un, and the Lox. Like they remembered to put Craig Mack's wack ass (they gave him a crazy nasty, pencil eraser fro)  in the movie but not the important people. The portrayal of Lil' Kim was deceptive. As I recall, according to interviews and remarks Kim was running drugs and just a straight up smut waaaay before she got her deal. In the movie she is a regular ass skinny Brooklyn chicken head working in Macy's who Big tells its best that she rhymes about being a slut. Nowhere near the same thing.

My other major issue is that a lot of the people specifically the actresses that played Faith and Kim were too pretty. Kim and Faith were looking real ragged back in the early 90s. Kim's eyebrows were all done in the movie and that's not what she REALLY looked like.

Faith didn't even look like she had done even a line of coke (and even this pic is not a great depiction of her in 93 but its as close as I could get), They made her look more refined in a hood way. Derek Luke a great actor but he shouldn't have played Puff. And this movie showed me just how much of a coon Puff really is. Don't get it twisted, he has grown a lot since then and I respect that he gets money and how he does it, but all that shit he was doing was some real buffoonery. But he definitely does have the dancing down to the letter. I wonder if Puff gave him personal lessons. I'm a little upset that Violetta Wallace was played by Angela Basset. All the Jamaicans in NY and they chose her. Yeah she's a great actress, everybody seen like all her movies but this movie should've been reserved for the breakout stars. And let's not forget Red Cafe's appearance as Premo, he did a great job for 15 minutes. (Still waiting on the album to drop not that mix tape shit you did with Envy). The guy who plays Tupac, looks nothing like him and was a bit too tall. They also make Tupac out to be a psycho. 

The one thing they didn't show is the love that BIG brought to Brooklyn, except at the end when they showed clips from his funeral. I remember that day vividly. But the love that he brought was incredible. Yes Big's life was hard, but with Big it was never about himself, and they didn't really go into that with the movie. I was very glad that his son CJ played the child version of him. They look like twins (scary). I do think if you're going to put CJ in the movie, might as well have included Tyanna, after all she is the first born and on the cover of Ready to Die, can not forget that.  On another note whoever was in charge of props and scenery is a jerk. It's set 10-15 years ago, why am I seeing Puff buying a Ferrari that came out in 2004. Really? There are no old silk Versace shirts

and people wearing like current shit in the movie, how is that possible? My other major issue, there's two scenes where it just wasn't authentic. First scene is the release of Ready to Die and Big's in a local record store signing autographs. Now many cultures love and enjoy hip-hop but when Ready to Die came out in this scene there were like yeah black people, but a shit-load of Asians, whites, where were the damn Spanish people? There were and still is waaaay more of us living in Bed-Stuy than them. (I'm not trying to say you shouldn't be there, I'm saying stay true to the reality of the situation). There's another scene where people are doing interviews about East Coast, West Coast drama. They got like the four people in their 30s and like two people in their teens or twenties huh???? In 1994 if you were listening to BIG chances are you were in the eighth grade like me or you were smoking weed at Howard. 

All and all go see the movie. Go see the movie if you love good music. Go see the movie if you love BIG and go see the movie cause you love hip-hop. 

On a side note, if you haven't already seen the movie, please note that this is a drama/ biography, not a damn sing-a-long/ musical. People don't need you singing the lyrics to One More Chance or Gimme the Loot in the theater. I know all the words to Machine Gun Funk and

Sky's the Limit, and I have all the albums, so thanks but no thanks. A lot of people went to see the movie in the city and it was sold out. I knew that these people were from Brooklyn, because like me they wore hats, tees and coats that said Brooklyn, but of course there were the more blatant ones, like those who wore furs. Only people from Brooklyn, (I say that to say you know which kind of people) get over dressed in furs to go to the movies. 

Update: I just found this interview of Charlie Baltimore talking about the movie that's quite interesting. Watch for yourself. 

***Nia-Raquelle***