While it's not quite in the JFK category - the Cuban Missile Crisis and the burgeoning civil rights movement were obviously the most serious of serious t'ings - for a hot minute in early 1997, the question of where you were when you heard The Notorious B.I.G was dead was the only one worth asking. One of the best things about music is the ability of a song to transport you right back to the time and place you were at when that tune was fresh and new. And if you were really around during the reign of Biggie Smalls, then Notorious, the biopic of his short but drama- (and talent-) filled life, will contain plenty of those moments.

Tupac's murder was a shock, for sure, but perhaps not a surprise. The incidents over the years - the shooting of the off-duty cops in Atlanta; the Quad Studios botched robbery/assassination attempt - kind of prepared the hip hop nation for the notion that the son of a Black Panther was perhaps even more ready to die than Biggie. But when the man born Christopher Wallace was killed, the shock was deep and far-reaching, and not just because he was only 24.

Biggie was one of the artists who, after the important innovations of the late '80s and early '90s, helped hip hop really come of age. It was a time when all of rap's naysyayers had to admit that this music was here to stay (house and jungle had many former hip hop heads joining the rock critics in proclaiming the death of art form during what is now fondly recalled as the golden age), and had something to say which was important. Yet Biggie stood apart even from the contemporaries who helped put New York - and lyricism - back on the map: set him next to Nas, Jigga and the Wu, and his impact is perhaps even greater.

That's a lot of history and even more personality to pack into even that  frame: so plenty of pressure, then, on the man who has to step in to those outsize shoes and recreate such an iconic figure for the silver screen.

"I got a call from a friend and he told me they were casting for the Biggie movie and at first I thought, 'Nah, I'm not going for it'," says Jamal Woolard, aka Gravy, as he recounts the unlikely story of how he became - albeit temporarily - one of the greatest emcees of all time. "Then [my friend] said to me, 'After years of knowing you, who else but you could play him?'"

Gravy's friend was right: even up close and personal, Woolard does possess a remarkable resemblance to Wallace. But physical similarity alone does not nail a role.

"I was already a rapper - that part was easy to do," Woolard reflects. Putting on weight may seem easy, too: but going from 270 to 340 pounds? That kind of bulking up takes some effort. Gravy also had to perfect the slow walk and remember to keep his head high above his shoulder at all times. "There's so much," he emphasises of Biggie's various physical foibles. "I looked at and tried to perfect damn near everything except the [lazy] eye, but I even fought for that to be included."

One of the first memorable back-in-the-days moments fans will love arrives with the scene where a young Biggie is performing Party and Bullshit at Howard Homecoming. It would be a lie to say that Party and Bullshit was the biggest deal on the Who's the Man? soundtrack when it was released - DJ Muggs' hypnotic bass line means that House of Pain's title track, recorded at the height of their powers, takes that title - but people took notice. Biggie's voice was clear yet rugged, and the bit where the fight breaks out was new and interesting. Put it this way, it certainly got a lot more props than Ease Up by 3rd Eye, the only other new artist on the set. Despite that, the Howard show is a pivotal moment in the narrative - this is where the younger Biggie first meets Tupac - so it has to be in there: yet the movie isn't content to just get the story right. Gravy expertly recreates the more energetic, slightly less polished flow Biggie rhymed with during the earliest part of his career - the way he rapped before Diddy finessed his rhyme style. It's also a trip to see Woolard rocking a Walker Wear denim suit: alongside Karl Kani and Carhartt it was one of the most popular clothing brands of the time. I can remember wanting one of those suits badly back then - but those things were expensive.

Another connoisseur's reminiscence moment arrives with the scene where the assembled studio personnel all laugh at Puffy when he plays Mtume's original version of Juicy Fruit for Biggie. Had it not been for Juicy's triumphant b-side, the Primo-produced stone-cold classic Unbelievable, then Biggie's rep may have taken a severe battering before his debut album even dropped. Heads were not feeling Juicy, though, to be fair, this was a time when even a certified banger like It Ain't Hard to Tell by Nas was considered soft by many hardrocks: they didn't play those Michael Jackson samples. But that was then - these days, the way the industry and mainstream media deal with hip hop means an artist has to have a radio single in order to have any hope of building a profile. Ready to Die's jump-off track was probably the first example of the 'safe' song being juxtaposed with the 'street' song.

Yet whatever memories fans have of Biggie, of course, are of relatively little consequence compared to the recollections of the film's executive producer and main driving force, and the person in the whole Notorious process that Gravy had to impress the most with his metamorphosis: Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace.

"I just wanted the right person to play my son," she insists. "Matter of fact, when I first met Jamal and heard Jamal was from Brooklyn I was not impressed: I didn't want to be charged with favouritism. But the second time I met Jamal I forgot about Jamal. I just saw this young man who came in, fascinated me, blew me away with his mannerisms and I just thought, 'That's my son'."

The plethora of documentaries and street DVDs about Biggie kind of made the film inevitable: the story had been told many times, but few had sought Voletta's input (the British documentarian Nick Broomfield and his Biggie and Tupac being an honourable exception to the general rule). Unsurprisingly, Ms.Wallace wanted to do things her way. "I've always wanted to make something," she says. "But the people who wanted to do this wanted to do their film, and I wanted to do a Voletta Wallace film."

Inevitably, even a film with Biggie's mum at the helm has attracted its fair share of controversy. Easy Mo Bee, who produced the lion's share of Ready to Die yet doesn't get a look-in in Notorious, probably has a right to be mad. Ditto Charli Baltimore, who is hardly included despite being Biggie's significant other at the time of his death. Lil' Kim has made her complaints very publicly. Her dissatisfaction with Naturi Naughton's portrayal, who she feels is too dark skinned to play her (insisting the lighter-skinned Christina Milian was a better fit), is perhaps not that surprising given the way Kim's own skin tone has changed over the years. The light skin/dark skin debate, which has also affected Kim's nemesis Foxy Brown at times, is one that will probably continue forever. But maybe that's a distraction: perhaps Kim doesn't like having to relive the moments when Biggie literally pushed her around - and worse.

"Cheo [Coker, the veteran hip hop journalist whose Biggie biography, Unbelievable, was the text Notorious was adapted from] had done interviews with Lil' Kim, so those interviews were the basic material," explains George Tillman Jr., the director. "Those scenes describe their relationship in many different aspects. There was a relationship where they wrote together; Biggie did a lot of writing for her; they worked together as artists. Sometimes they got upset with one another. They loved each other. They were friends. There were many different aspects of their relationship and there's four or five scenes in that movie that have different ranges."

Tillman is particularly proud of the live scenes, which are where a good film truly excels. For those of us who saw the man in the flesh, these are the parts where the movie goes on to another plane.

In March 1995, when Biggie headlined the Hammersmith Palais in London, my 17-year-old self never thought that in years to come I would be proudly boasting that I saw Biggie Smalls live. It's like being able to boast that you saw Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke or James Brown in their heyday. What would rock'n'roll, soul and funk be without those three? These were the days when the Nation of Islam would be rolling mad deep outside hip hop shows and you really might have to think twice before going to the toilet on your own.

Biggie's onstage prowess, honed in the Brooklyn street battles depicted at the beginning of the film, was truly something else. You had to pity anyone charged with appearing on the same bill, and that night in Hammersmith was a case in point. Poor old Craig Mack was blown out of the water, despite having a hit like Flava in Your Ear, which was just as popular as anything Biggie had made. The Q-Tip remix of Get Down was massive too, but even he couldn't hang on stage.

Midway through Biggie's set, Puffy, being the fly brother that he is, began handing out bottles of champagne to the crowd. This was unheard of at the time; and hasn't happened much since, so props are due. The scenes in Notorious where Derek Luke, who portrays Diddy, raps the lines from Warning on stage, really brought memories of the show flooding back. Once again, Woolard's mannerisms are on point. He holds court in the middle of the stage in the same way Biggie used to. This is one of the reasons why Puffy was so important: given his size, Biggie couldn't rap those complicated lines live and move about like one of the Pussycat Dolls. Unfortunately, Lil' Cease's involvement in Biggie's live show is underplayed on screen. Fourteen years ago he helped Biggie recreate Gimme the Loot live by rapping the part of Biggie's partner in crime ("muthafuckin' right, pockets lookin' kinda tight"), but I guess that wasn't the kind of song the filmmakers were trying to promote too hard.

The depiction of the relationship between Biggie and Puffy is another area where the film has courted controversy. In the years following Biggie's passing, many tidbits emerged - from those in the know and those that don't know shit - that have shed different shades of light on a relationship that seems it might have been heated more often than it was cordial. No-one is disputing the pair were very close, or that disagreements will occur in any personal or business relationship. It should go without saying that with no Puffy, there would be no Biggie. But the only argument the film depicts between the two is about shoes. Could they have explored this side of things more? Ms Wallace, who herself has been mildly critical of Puffy (her co-executive producer) at times, doesn't seem to think so.

"I don't know about ups and downs," she says. "Puffy and Christopher's relationship was... what it is. They were partners, but to me I think they had a beautiful relationship. Whatever he promised him, he fulfilled that promise. I never knew Puffy [when Christopher was alive]. I got to know him after my son was dead. We have a great deal of respect for each other. When I saw him he gave me respect. Whatever I demanded, I got it."

Notorious is hardly a suspense movie: even if you arrive at the cinema unaware that the protagonist is eventually going to be shot dead, Tillman decides to tell the story in flashback, so the movie starts with the murder and spools back from there. But in the same way that terminal cancer never prepares you for the actual death, the inevitability doesn't deprive the film's final scenes of their raw emotion. The real-life footage from the breathtaking turnout on the streets of Brooklyn for the funeral procession show the massive, and very real, grief that was felt by so many about a tragedy that was so needless. Gravy, who hails from Brooklyn and was present, remembers that "it felt like when people used to tell you about Martin Luther King back in the days."

The post-Biggie years were not as kind as they could have been to Biggie's former Junior Mafia cohorts, in particular Lils Cease and Kim, the most high-profile members. I visited Cease in his studio in Coney Island during the same week in early 2005 that he was present at the trial that saw Kim sent to prison. He was mad cool and definitely surviving and thriving - the Mafia were enjoying a low key hit with Just Us, and the vibes between them were good. But the album he promised at the time never materialised, and the chorus of that song was very telling. '"No Kim, No Puff, No Un, No Jigga," the song defiantly but plaintively declaimed, "just us."

Back then, Cease was also at pains to make extra specially certain that you knew he wasn't a snitch. All that crosstown beef with Maino - a very close friend of Kim's - followed and now Kim and Cease are about as close as Rick Ross and 50 Cent. It's interesting to wonder how different all of this would have been had Biggie lived. Let's be real, they would have both probably enjoyed successful ghostwritten albums a la Hardcore, Lil' Kim's debut. On the plus side, Cease made a point to mention how cool he still was with Jadakiss who appeared on Just Us's b-side, Die Anyway. Jada, who, during his dis war with 50 Cent, was able to boast that he "made real songs with Big not them made-up shits," was the only former leading light of Bad Boy who Cease seemed to have genuinely fond memories of. Every now and again, friendships can survive the industry. Jadakiss and his L.O.X brethren Sheek and Styles memorably rhymed alongside Biggie on Last Days from Life After Death. And who can forget the standout verses from Jada and Biggie on It's All About the Benjamins?

Who shot him? We'll probably find out the truth about JFK first. Voletta Wallace has obviously decided that now is not the time for such things. "Well," she exhales with a certain sadness. "The case is still pending and that's all I will say at the moment."

Her reluctance to discuss such matters is understandable. The case has already claimed its fair share of high-profile casualties. Former policeman Russell Poole, who headed the investigation into Biggie's murder, was forced to resign when he became increasingly frustrated with the LAPD's refusal to follow the evidence. Once again Nick Broomfield's Biggie and Tupac will tell you all you need to know. Randall Sullivan's Labyrinth, written with Poole's extensive co-operation, contains a similar amount of explosive allegations. Makes you wanna holler.

One of the knock-on effects of an investigation Poole suggests was deliberately botched was that it shed some desperately unwanted light on the LAPD's internal culture of corruption and dysfunction. From the murder the Ramparts scandal erupted, with a plethora of LAPD officers, including some who have at different times been suspected of culpability for Biggie's killing, found to be far more corrupt than the criminals they were supposed to be catching. You kind of get the feeling the BIG fella would have approved of the art that resulted: it's clear that the Ramparts scandal was the main inspiration for The Shield, the realest TV cop show ever made (if we accept David Simon's reasonable assertion that The Wire isn't just a cop show).

Perhaps Ms Wallace can't comment for legal reasons: the case rumbles on, year after year, claim after counter-claim, appeal after setback after outrageous newspaper theory. But if Biggie's killers are ever brought to justice, his mother will be able to claim as much of the credit as she can claim for bringing Notorious to the big screen, and helping her son find that life after death he wrote about with such spellbinding, and often chilling, nonchalance