Maino wants to see the another Biggie Smalls movie, and he may have a point.
During an interview with DJ Small Eyez, the Brooklyn rapper touched on the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, and was asked what other biopics he would like to see.
His response? A remake of the Notorious biopic about the late Biggie Smalls that dropped in 2009. His reasoning? He felt it was released too early.
“I want ‘em to do Big movie over,” Maino said. “I want it to be done over. I think it was done a little too early. I want them to really get that one done right. You know what I mean? You have to let a little bit of time go on. Because you want to speak to another generation. The N.W.A movie—This is what? 30 years after. So, you speaking to a whole ‘nother generation. When they did the Ray Charles movie, it was—You speaking to a whole ‘nother generation. I believe part of the problem with the Big movie—And I don’t want to be judgmental about it. But I think the same people that—We made the movie for the same people that was just here with him.”
He went on to explain his own experience in watching the Straight Outta Compton film with his son, who prior to watching the film, didn’t know that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre began their journeys to lifelong success as rappers.
“I got a chance to share with him real history, real rap history…My son had a lot of questions,” the rapper said. “He didn’t even know Ice Cube was a rapper. And I don’t think Ice Cube gets the credit that he actually always deserves. He was that dude…To see my son like ‘Man, I didn’t even know, dad.’”
Upon further inspection, Maino has a damning point. Some quick mathematics supports his claim. The rated-R Notorious film released in 2009, only 12 years after the death of Biggie. Meaning the youngest group of people who could legally enter the movie on their own, and not have to suffer through the cursing and nudity awkwardly with their parents by their sides would have been born around 1990-1992 or so.
Those people were about five to seven years old when Biggie was killed. Sure, a vast knowledge of Hip Hop culture wasn’t embedded in their minds by then, but they can remember the 90s; their childhoods.
For those of us who weren’t even born at the time, watching Notorious in 2009 was a bit more different, and to some, not even the slightest bit appealing. I was personally 11 years old, and I’m still trying to remember if I even knew who the Notorious B.I.G. was in the 6th grade.
Sure, watching the film in present times now is a great experience, but it may have missed its opportunity to become the instant classic Straight Outta Compton is. Not simply because one film might have been better than the other. But, by missing the chance to, as Maino would put it, “speak to another generation.”
