... it was only a matter of time before B.I.G's story would make it onto the big screen. His rags-to-riches tale has been well-documented over the years, and it's no surprise that Hollywood executives have been tripping over themselves to secure the film rights to the story of how a former drug dealer gave a messianic hope to hip-hop. Some have even likened his career to Barack Obama's achievement in becoming the first black president. "B.I.G was our Shakespeare," explains Jamal Woolard, the 33-year-old fellow Brooklyn rapper who landed the lead role in the film. "He gave us hope, he gave us faith, he gave us dreams. Like Martin Luther King Jr and Obama. He meant a lot for the community."

When we meet at Frank White, a Brooklyn café named after one of Biggie's alter egos, Woolard, also known as the rapper Gravy, has his own explanation for the silence, gasps and tears he faced during his transformation into Biggie. "Some people couldn't stomach it," he says. "Puff (Sean Combs, who owns Bad Boy Records, Biggie's record label] couldn't stay around. He just couldn't take it. But I felt like that's my job. They were hurting, but I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to give you what you want." And also what a film like Notorious absolutely demands: an eerily credible re-creation of its protagonist. "If Biggie doesn't work, the movie doesn't work," says the film's director, George Tillman Jr. This week audiences and critics will get to decide if the efforts of Woolard and his many coaches have paid off, which would be a particularly impressive accomplishment given that the real Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace, died only 12 years ago – murdered in March 1997 in Los Angeles in a still unsolved drive-by shooting – and remains fresh in the minds of many.