Depending on who you are, where you grew up and how you interpret popular culture, Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace is either a martyr-poet or just another in a long line of violence-obsessed rappers who died too young. To director George Tillman Jr. and writers Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker, Wallace is firmly the former; realizing that fact is essential to accepting “Notorious” as both powerful, epic bio-pic and (mostly) subtle tribute to the fallen rapper.

NOTORIOUS

Three stars (Out of four)

STARRING: Jamal Woolard, Angela Bassett, Derek Luke,

Naturi Naughton, Christopher Jordan Wallace and Anthony Mackie

DIRECTOR: George Tillman Jr.

RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes

RATING: R for language, sexuality and thematic elements.

THE LOWDOWN: Powerful biopic depicts the rise and fall of Christopher Wallace,

aka the Notorious B. I. G, from Brooklyn street hustler to world’s

hottest rap artist, to hip-hop martyr. Not just for rap fans.

Biggie, if you happened to spend the early part of the ’90s living under a rock, emerged from the dead-end streets of the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn to become the most revered rapper of his generation. He was dead before his 25th birthday, murdered under still-murky circumstances, a victim of the East Coast vs. West Coast rap wars.

Given that Biggie’s murder is still unsolved and his reputation as the godfather of modern hip-hop only growing by the year, it seemed a given that “Notorious” would center its thematic thrust around the events of the 1997 slaying. That it doesn’t is one of many pleasant surprises the film offers. The rest come mostly courtesy of the hitherto unknown lead, Jamal Woolard, whose portrayal of adult Biggie is nuanced, subtle and — happily — free of bombast and hyperbole.

The film’s most powerful scenes don’t involve the murder at all, in fact. They center on Woolard’s portrayal of the tenaciously talented but beaten-down young Biggie prior to his meteoric rise to fame. Abandoned by his father and raised by his single mother under dire financial circumstances, young Christopher Wallace learns quickly that being a nice kid who loves his mom will not get him far in his neighborhood. He adopts a persona that makes a strength from the weakness of his obesity; turns his anger at his father and his lot in life into skilled rhyming couplets; and takes to the streets as a crack dealer.

This could’ve been where the story ends, for American urban neighborhoods are littered with the dreams of would-be rap superstars who never manage to transcend the harsh realities of the streets and end up in jail, addicted or dead. But somehow Wallace manages to escape, despite getting his teenage girlfriend pregnant, doing hard time for drug dealing and finding little to support his dreams of alchemizing rhymes into gold.

It is to the “Notorious” writers’ and director’s credit that much emphasis is placed on Biggie’s MC skills. We see him freestyling at parties with friends, engaging in “head cutting” rapper battles on the Bed-Stuy streets and managing to hold onto an image of himself that gets little support from his day-to-day surroundings.

During all of this, we realize that the talent is genuine, that both the language and the way that language rhythmically unfolds are unique. It’s at this moment, less than halfway through the film, that we fully suspend disbelief. We’re on Biggie’s side.

This might pose some biographical concerns, of course. Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace (played in the film with quiet fury by Angela Bassett) and his producer and compatriot Sean “Puffy” Combs (Derek Luke, in a performance that provides much of the film’s levity) are among the producers of “Notorious,” and both would likely prefer to see Smalls emerge as a heroic figure than as a man who lived and died by the sword.

But Tillman and Co. don’t really brush over the ugly underneath. Clearly, this was a deeply conflicted man, one who never really resolved his childhood issues and who often treated those around him (particularly women, and his own children) carelessly at best — and, at worst, abusively. Perhaps only those closest to Biggie during his rise to fame — wife Faith Evans (a stunning Antonique Smith) and lover Lil’ Kim (a suitably volcanic Naturi Naughton) — will know how close to reality “Notorious” really comes.

As a film, however, it succeeds by transcending its subject matter to tell a deeply affecting story of the hopes and aspirations of inner-city African-Americans. It’s an American Dream turned upside down. In the end, Christopher Wallace falls victim to the same economic system he sought to escape as a defiant, hopeful young man. That lends an air of near-Shakespearean tragedy to “Notorious.” It also makes Biggie Smalls appear most decidedly human.