Biggie Smalls, the Woody Allen of Rap

I don't care what anyone says, I'm still seeing this movie...

I wouldn't have thought there was an original thing left to say about Biggie, but Jody Rosen's portrait of the artist as an aspiring Upper East Side Jew is inspired: "He was a tragicomic character: fat, ugly, and "stressed," spooked by the squad car on the corner and by fellow hustlers waiting to ambush him in his kitchen. The agita was a birthright--B.I.G. was a thugged-out version of the classic New York neurotic. He was as New York-to-the-bone as Woody Allen, and in the early 1990s, NYC hip-hop was in need of a local hero."