As a result, the works made in his honor are often sticky and flawed attempts at grappling with a profound tragedy in a culture with an aversion to the mere language of death. Has anyone ever really been better at the sport of rap than Biggie Smalls? Has anyone ever had a more natural proclivity toward the rhythm and sounds of the genre? To know that such a being existed and was slain so young is to behold the terrifying and unsettling truth that this world may not adhere to reason. The volume is understandable considering the man in question. Released Monday, I Got a Story to Tell is one of several grasps at closure since Biggie’s death-a litany of content that includes Life After Death, other posthumous releases, books, and documentaries, and, in 2009, an ill-received but estate-approved biopic, Notorious. “His story,” Diddy says, “doesn’t have to be a tragedy.” It’s a statement that has a tinge of uncertainty. The suggestion is that because of this, a part of Biggie did too. The MC’s physical being may have been laid to rest, but his music and memory lived. Bystanders radiated praise, thanks, joy, and love-as Big once chronicled. There was a procession after the service, a pilgrimage through Brooklyn. (“It felt like everyone wanted to give up,” Combs says.) Yet, he recalls, a balm did eventually arrive. Solemn undersells the pain surrounding Biggie’s funeral. “I never knew that you could feel so sad, or feel so hurt, or feel so empty,” Sean Combs says in the opening moments of the new Netflix documentary Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell. It was a sequel to his 1994 debut, Ready to Die. His final album, which dropped 16 days later, had already been titled Life After Death. Four bullets entered his body but one alone struck the fatal blow, ravaging his heart, lungs, and liver. The rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, or quite simply, Big, was 24 when a vehicle ambushed and shot through the passenger side of the dark-green GMC Suburban he was riding in, on March 9, 1997. The fact that Christopher Wallace often toyed with death did not make his demise any easier to understand.