All hail the 50th anniversary of hip-hop! But what does that mean? Are we celebrating longevity? Are we waxing nostalgic about seminal moments and/or periods of transition in the art form?
I believe we are far better served focusing on the culture, the impact hip-hop has had on mainstream music, fashion, language and the overall social landscape, not only here in the United States, but across the globe. Hip-hop, like rock and roll, has infiltrated our collective consciousness. It includes a way of seeing and speaking and walking through any and every space where people encounter one another. And it has evolved, shifting the perspective of every cultural element it has come into contact with as well.
Setting our sights on movies, I want to celebrate that idea of evolution. What was and what is hip-hop as we see it on the variety of screens available to us now? The simple answer is hip-hop is about upending expectation.
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Is there a sense of order to this compilation? No. It is a sample, a remix of memories and moments, a document of the news of the culture that has made me the writer, critic and curator that I am today.
BROWN SUGAR (2002)
Almost exactly one year after 9/11, I found myself in New York City at the press junket for Rick Famuyiwa's love letter to love and hip-hop. Two childhood friends — one a magazine writer/editor (Sanaa Lathan) and the other a hip-hop record executive (Taye Diggs) — reconnect and struggle with their love of the changing art form and each other. Has hip-hop sold out to corporate interests? Can it still be the link that holds them together? I walked out of those interviews and found myself wandering the streets of NYC with Famuyiwa as we rediscovered the city together, which is of course, hip-hop's birthplace.
DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY (2005)
Sharp-witted comedy has its own rhythm, rhyme and reason and no one, at the moment, understands that better than Dave Chappelle. He drops science that isn't only made to capture laughs from his audience; he's reminding us of shared histories — both good and bad — and the potential for us to evolve together. So, when he decided to host a hip-hop street party with some of the most influential players in New York, he documented the journey and his desire to bring folks from Ohio to the event. Comedy and criticism co-exist in hip-hop, and this Block Party feels like a dissertation from one of the founding scholars.
NAS: TIME IS ILLMATIC (2014)
One of the greatest to ever hold a microphone had the story of his first release told. His legacy is the legacy of hip-hop, so it is fitting that the voices participating in this film include Pharrell Williams, Alicia Keys, Q-Tip, and modern philosopher Cornel West. Hip-hop as a culture, as it hits the 50-year mark, needs more documentation. It demands to have its history captured and done so outside the form and structure of the music. We must remember those who set the stage and revere those icons while they still walk among us.
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MENACE II SOCIETY (1993)
It probably seems strange to have gone this far in this list-making before featuring a hardcore example of hip-hop's impact on narrative storytelling, but this classic from Albert and Allen Hughes captured the tragic allure of street life. No discussion of the film can escape the idea of the hustlers (Tyrin Turner and Larenz Tate) who earlier in the story, robbed a convenience store and retrieved the surveillance footage only to sit back later and watch it. There will never be a greater and more telling account of hip-hop feasting on its own hype than this sequence.
BEAT STREET (1984)
Talk about exploring changing cultures. The storyline of Stan Lathan's Beat Street turns its attention to the period following the gang wars of the 1960s to hip-hop's expanding spotlight on DJs, rappers, break dancers and graffiti artists who proudly expressed themselves and created the earliest examples of hip-hop's burgeoning appeal. Some of the more daring fusions of art forms to come later would not have been as likely without this first glimpse into hip-hop's potential. This was a peek into the underground hustling days of the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fab Five Freddy.
LEMONADE (2016)
Beyoncé, at the time a scorned pop and R&B artist — albeit one of the biggest performers in the world — bares her body and soul in a visual collection inspired by her album full of bitter lemons that she transformed into the sweetest lemonade. Her rage and disappointment harnesses hip-hop energy and the diverse stylistic choices made in the sound and visual presentation speaks, in the most organic way, of the realization of what hip-hop is. Nothing — no sound or feeling — is off-limits. It is all available to chop and screw up into a heady stew of propulsive drama. Imagine an instant classic of an album with 12 videos, 12 chapters in one of the most cohesive stories committed to film.
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SPOTLIGHT PERFORMER – F. GARY GRAY
Back in the day — the early 1990s specifically — a young man with a camera started making music videos for West Coast rappers. He was shooting scenes of a life and world he knew, which meant he had the trust and respect of the artists he was working with, and soon, F. Gary Gray was doing more than making five-minute mini-movies. He was able to leverage his connections in the hip-hop community to start showcasing his expanding talents as a filmmaker whose vision was imbued through and through with the culture. From Friday, Set It Off and The Negotiator to The Italian Job, Law Abiding Citizen and The Fate of the Furious, Gray has exposed hip-hop's evolution as a foundational aspect of global life.
THE SHOP (2018)
There may be no better example of hip-hop's neighborhood impact than the HBO docu-series The Shop, executive produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter. The pair have granted audiences access to the conversations that take place in one of the most sacred spaces in the community — the barbershop. These discussions feature stars of sports and entertainment (music and movies) chopping up topics and sharing details from their experiences. Hip-hop, at its most basic level, has always been about the Black experience in America, and there is no place where we are more ourselves than in the barber's chair.
HAMILTON (2020)
The Disney+ presentation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's global sensation about the country's founding fathers, which started on Broadway, was revolutionary. Here were the founders full of swag, rapping (with their flows that can and should stand alongside Shakespeare) and relaying history in the most accessible way imaginable. It was an alternative view that we could only wish was the way it truly was. Here was hip-hop elevated and celebrated on the biggest stages and blessed with honors in an artistic field far beyond its roots.
THE WONDER YEAR (2011) / THE HIP-HOP FELLOW (2014)
The final spot on this list speaks most directly to who I am and hip-hop's impact on me as a writer and critic. These two documentaries, directed by Kenneth Price, delve into the efforts of Grammy award-winning producer 9th Wonder (aka Patrick Douthit), one of hip-hop's most dedicated ambassadors. The Wonder Year adopts a year-in-the-life approach, following the producer as he makes beats, teaches classes at Duke University and juggles being a family man, while sharing anecdotes about his early life and the influences that set him on the path to become the musician and scholar that he is.
The Hip-Hop Fellow zeroes in on 9th Wonder's time as a Harvard fellow, where his research project became a key piece in the creation of a hip-hop archive at the Ivy League university. Both films illustrate hip-hop's ability to synthesize multiple references (samples, live instrumentation and rhymes) to produce new art and cultural commentary. As a writer, I have leaned into the not-so-subtle similarities between production and criticism to approximate that remixed flow into my work and share that with students throughout the region.
