Jamal Woolard, shown above, plays the deceased rapper.

Woolard: I think Biggie would be proud of me because I made his mother very happy.

George Whipple: You know, she's not an easy woman to please all the time.

Woolard: No, not at all. She's a very strong authority figure.

Whipple: What do you think his influence was on the music business and on culture in general?

Woolard: He was the blueprint for the lifestyle of hip hop.

Whipple: Could he have come up anywhere other than Brooklyn?

Woolard: No!

Anthony Mackie portrays the late, great rapper Tupac Shakur.

"I feel like the thing about Tupac, black or white, he gave adolescent youth a voice and nobody else has been able to do that," says Mackie.

Derek Luke plays rap artist Sean “Diddy” Combs.

"It was an honor because I got to play half me and half him," says Luke.

Combs, also known as "Puffy," "P. Diddy," "Sean Jean," and a myriad of other names, is the executive producer.

"[Notorious B.I.G.] made us all push the envelope. He made us all raise our performance to another bar,” said Combs. “He made us feel it, he gave us that emotional part. Biggie's music is emotional."

Voletta Wallace, the late rapper's mother, was the film’s producer.

"Maybe if he was here we wouldn't be making this movie. I think we captured the essence of him every part of him, but I
I just hope we did him justice," says Wallace.

She is probably happy that Angela Bassett portrays her on the big screen.

"Because we know how the story ends, you can't sort of jump in there, you know,” says Bassett. “For me, there's a tender place that demands sensitivity."

The movie shows that Notorious B.I.G. was big everywhere, but he was no where bigger than in Brooklyn.

“Notorious” is in theaters on January 16.