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Fund It: Hip Hop Tales from the Bronx to Ulaanbataar
Tweet It really is hip hop’s world – we just live in it. Yes, we’ve heard the rumbling that rap has entered its ’80s-rock-style middle age and been superseded by high velocity dance pop. In the charts...
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Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
Tweet Directed by Kevin Fitzgerald USA, 2000 Genre: Hip Hop Ice-T’s Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, which just debuted at Sundance, aims to do nothing less than tell the story of how rap got...
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Deal Iced for Rap Documentary Something From Nothing
Tweet If there was one music film that seemed destined to come out of Sundance with a distribution deal, it was Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap, what with Ice-T both behind and in front of the...
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Beats Rhymes & Picks: Michael Rapaport Rocks the Top Hip Hop Docs
Tweet So after we posted today about Michael Rapaport being asked by the Associated Press for his best five music films of all time – and, a man after our own heart, giving ‘em six instead – we caught...
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Today in Music (Film): Blowfly’s Birthday Party
Tweet Something that happened in music history on this date, and a music documentary that goes with it. Simple. If you’ve been saving that smutty rewrite of “Happy Birthday” for a special occasion,...
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Today in Music (Film): Suge Behind Bars
Tweet Something that happened in music history on this date, and a music documentary that goes with it. Simple. On February 28, 1997, hip hop kingpin Marion “Suge” Knight was sentenced to nine years...
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Trailer Peek: Rap and the LA Riots in Music Film ‘Uprising’
Tweet The VH1 Rock Doc Uprising: Hip Hop & the LA Riots, which premieres Wednesday at SXSW, recalls the days and nights 20 years ago when Los Angeles burned after four white cops who’d been caught...
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Mean Streets: Rap and Riots in VH1 Music Film ‘Uprising’
Tweet The music documentary Uprising: Hip Hop and the LA Riots refracts the worst civil unrest in American history through a rap prism, examining how the assertive music of N.W.A. and other artists...
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Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap
Tweet Ice-T’s directorial debut features the OG MC turned actor (or cop killer turned cop portrayer, if you like) turned filmmaker interviewing a veritable hip hop hall of fame (Afrika Bambaataa,...
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Sensational: ‘Freak-Style’ Rap Documentary Seeks Light of Day
Tweet We’ve been looking forward to seeing The Rise and Fall and Rise of Sensational since our pal Christine Enterlein, formerly of Hamburg’s Unerhort music film festival, picked Elizabeth Moore’s hip...
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Mass Transit: Hip Hop Documentary with a Boston Accent
Tweet We don’t know much about Boston hip hop, but then people like us are the reason for music documentaries like Mass Transit. As the filmmakers drily note on their IndieGoGo campaign page,...
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TIFF 2012 Music Films: Fewer Stars, More Strange
Tweet Last year’s Toronto International Film Festival opened with the U2 music documentary From the Sky Down and premiered new docs on Paul McCartney, Neil Young, and Pearl Jam. The 2012 nonfiction...
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Podcast #31: Let Fury Have the Hour
Tweet Numerous films have explored music as a form of protest, and at first glance Let Fury Have the Hour seems cut from the same cloth, with its all-star cast of politically minded artists. But not...
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Kosha Dillz Music Documentary: Rapping All Over
Tweet In 14 years in the rap game, Kosha Dillz has freestyle battled at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe, played SXSW five times, appeared as a character in an NBA video game, been deported from...
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Reincarnated
Tweet Snoop Dogg revisits his gangsta past and traces his spiritual and musical rebirth (or reinvention) as peace-loving man of Jah Snoop Lion in this music documentary. Directed by Andy Capper and...
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Hip Hop Documentary Mongolian Bling: Steppes to the City
Tweet As its declarative and, it turns out, slightly ironic title suggests, music documentary Mongolian Bling is about the emergence of a rap culture in the vast, sparse Asian nation of desert and...
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Nelson George: Finding the Funk Pt. 1
Tweet Funkadelic’s classic 1970 track “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow” has come to serve as a dualistic clarion call for funk itself, but encomiums to the form tend to focus on the booty...
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Salome’s Tale: A Woman Rapper Makes Waves in Iran
Tweet Salome MC Filmmaker Sahar Sarshar calls the subject of her upcoming music documentary Salome’s Tale “a true underground artist,” and it’s hard to imagine a more apt resume for that particular...
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American Hot Wax: Documenting the Wide World of Stones Throw Records
Tweet Madlib (left) and DJ Peanut Butter Wolf Eclecticism is what every record label strives for, right? A rich and diverse roster that reflects the open-mindedness and risk-taking dynamism of the...
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The World Is Yours: Hip Hop’s Digital Planet
Tweet Wiz Khalifa “It’s a way of speaking things into existence,” filmmaker Marguerite de Bourgoing says at the close of the Kickstarter pitch video for her music documentary The World Is Yours. She’s...
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