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Ben Farrow: The Bach statement is crazy seriously crazy. Three hundred years from now, will the world will care at all about Biggie Smalls? I give him 1/10 that long - if that - and had film/TV been around more than 50 years, Bach would be bigger than the Beatles.

Sean Collier: Not to devolve into an argument about Biggie's musical merits, but Joel has it right. B.I.G.'s place in history is well-deserved, and hip-hop would be completely different without him. Furthermore, his analysis for the patterns and themes of rap music were advanced almost unfathomably beyond his age and experience; look deeply into his lyrics, and there's more experimentation with the rap persona and dismantling of the urban gangster archetype than any other rapper has achieved, before or after Wallace's death. As to the popularity among young audiences, Biggie's legend is very much alive and well, and still very prominent in the minds of new hip-hop fans. Let's also not discount the fact that this is the first prominent biopic of a rapper (8 Mile doesn't count); that alone would draw in urban crowds.

Jim Van Nest: Getting back on topic as to why kids who were pre-teens when Biggie died flocked to this movie, I honestly think it's the fact that it's not like he ever went away, really. Same with Tupac. How many records have been released posthumously? How many songs have been written about them? You know, John Lennon was shot and aside from the album that was scheduled for release around the time of his death, we didn't hear anything from him for over 15 years until those lost tapes surfaced and we got "new" Beatles songs. In the case of Biggie...he never really went away, as fas as radio and clubs are concerned. I think that has a lot to do with the success of his biopic with the younger crowd.

Daron Aldridge: Hip-hop is much more mainstream today than ever before and therefore, more accessible. Two of this week's top five Billboard singles are rap (T.I. and Kanye West) and lil Wayne's most recent album was the top selling of 2008. I think that the subject matter of the rap world is what appealed to the younger audience, who may not be familiar with Smalls. Incidentally, my local top 40 station does play Biggie's "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems" among others quite regularly, so he is not completely foreign to them.

David Mumpower: As a white Tennessean, I have absolutely nothing of value to add to a discussion about the integrity and impact of various mid-90s hip hop artists. For that matter, I couldn't even do it for country musicians. I'm limited in scope to Soundgarden discussions and since they don't have a biopic in the offing (hook me up, Hollywood producers!), I'm out of luck. What I can say for certain is that musical "generations" generally only span a six to ten year period. The most fascinating era for a teenager other than his own is the one directly before it, thereby allowing a teen to say that theirs is clearly the superior form of music. Since I was in the hair band era and the one that came after it was a group of people who didn't bathe or sing on key, I'm one of the few people who is actually right about this sort of thing. But I digress. While I find the idea that most of the people who just made Notorious a hit were watching Barney videos while he was banging Lil Kim fascinating, it's not -that- surprising.

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