14 Essential Hip Hop Movies

“Juice” (1992)
Of all the “hood” dramas to emerge in the early ’90s, there’s a vocal faction who have made the case for “Juice”  being one of the best, perhaps only second to the Hughes Bros‘ “Menace II Society” for sheer entertainment value. It’s less preachy than “Boyz N The Hood,” more focused and tonally coherent than “Dead Presidents” and it is not, thank God, “Poetic Justice.” The directorial debut of cinematographer and Spike Lee’s former classmate Ernest Dickerson, (who would go on to direct many fine episodes of HBO’s “The Wire”) “Juice” plays like a jacked-up, adrenalized urban buddy movie, albeit one that climaxes in agonizing bloodshed. Our four heroes are the level-headed Q, (Omar Epps), apoplectic Bishop (Tupac Shakur), romantic Raheem (Khalil Kain) and the chubby, loveable group teddy bear Steel (Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins). Apart from Q aspiring to be a DJ, this four-man team —known in their neighborhood as “The Wrecking Crew”— don’t tend to make big plans. More often than not, they are content to spend their days drinking 40s, shopping for LPs, hanging out at the arcade and trying to flirt with random honeys. After getting pushed around one too many times, Tupac’s Bishop, who tellingly obsesses over James Cagney in “White Heat,” decides that the crew must rob a local liquor store in order to get some respect, or “juice.” What unfolds is genuinely harrowing, and even if the enterprise is somewhat dated now —there’s only so many fades, Cuban link chains and high-top Adidas sneakers one can be expected to process over the course of 100 minutes— the film benefits from authentic emotional stakes and the earnest investment of its actors. This is particularly true of Shakur, who makes Bishop an insecure, bullied beta male who unwittingly transforms into a live-action human time bomb. The film is also wise not to glorify the gangsta lifestyle: there’s nothing glamorous about Dickerson’s unsentimental portrayal of stupid, meaningless violence, casual amorality and fractured friendships. “Juice” is most certainly a product of its time, but viewed now, it can be seen as a superior one.

“Notorious” (2009)
The life of Christopher Wallace, better known to the world as the Notorious B.I.G., was always ripe for a movie treatment. Here’s a kid who grew up in crime-infested Bed-Stuy, sold crack in his teens, ascended to the highest echelons of mid-1990’s gangster rap and was shot dead in the streets of Los Angeles, a case that is no closer to being solved now than it was in 1997. In theory, the gritty, neo-realistic fiction that informed his best verses —particularly 1994’s watershed “Ready to Die”, which is flush with cinematic criminology raps, murder scenarios and suicidal thoughts— should have also informed the big-screen treatment of his life, directed by “Soul Food“‘s George Tillman, Jr. And yet sadly, it was not to be. “Notorious” has moments of undeniable power, and rapper/actor/comic Jamal Woolard as Big exudes the same uncanny mixture of self-deprecation and menace that gave Wallace his unique aura. But ultimately, “Notorious” falls prey to biopic syndrome, losing itself in a haze of cliché. The recording sessions fail to make us feel the electricity of his iconic recordings, a lot of the supporting performances seem like rote ‘SNL’ impressions (the normally reliable Anthony Mackie really doesn’t fare well as Wallace’s West-Coast rival Tupac Shakur) and the attempts to reproduce many of the pivotal moments in Biggie’s career feel like stunts. Still, it’s worth seeing if you’re a fan of the rapper, or until the day comes when the real, crazier-than-life story of the Bad Boy vs. Death Row beef gets the movie treatment it deserves. Woolard’s performance is poignant and the movie has its moments, yet “Notorious” fails to place in the upper rank of hip hop cinema.

“Slingshot Hip Hop” (2008)
Imitation comes first in Jackie Reem Salloum’s 2008 documentary “Slingshot Hip Hop,” as the three members of Palestinian group DAM (“Blood” in Arabic) look to U.S. hip hop for subject matter and influences. It isn’t that these musicians are ignorant of the political chaos and oppression surrounding them as Palestinians living in Lyd, a city based within Israel, but the film charts their journey toward fusing U.S. hip hop with their own politically charged perspectives. Recently Mike Skinner of The Streets returned to Lyd to speak with DAM for the Noisey series “Hip Hop In The Holy Land,” and found musician Tamer Nafar speaking of the same struggle that Salloum’s documentary captured seven years earlier. In that way, “Slingshot Hip Hop” remains vital —it’s a quick primer on the origins of Palestinian hip hop through animation, news footage and the artists’ individual stories, told by the artists’ themselves. Every gig turns out to be a dangerous prospect, as does the simple use of language: one artist, Abeer, is fired from her job at McDonalds for speaking Arabic before successfully suing them. Other acts, including the Akko female rap duo Arapeyat, contribute tales of similar battles and victories; while the film sometimes falters in its presentation and flow, these moments stand out as an excellent introduction to one of hip hop’s most rapidly growing scenes, and as a reminder of the genre’s ability to reflect and influence social change in countries and cultures far from these shores.

“This Is The Life” (2008)
For those who only first caught sight of Ava DuVernay this past year around “Selma” and her talks with Marvel, you’ll find a familiar face in her documentary “This Is The Life,” when she shows up onscreen as MC Eve, a member of Los Angeles group Figures of Speech with Ronda Ross aka MC Jyant. DuVernay’s prior involvement in the West Coast hip hop scene allows for an insider’s perspective in this extremely well-versed, entertaining look at the Los Angeles locations and artists that gained prominence in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.  Chillin’ Villain Empire, Cut Chemist, T-Love, Monalisa Murray, Chali2Na of Jurassic 5 and many others lend their voices to discussing The Good Life Café, a South Central health food restaurant whose open mic nights quickly grew from audiences of four to shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. As a rebuttal to the gangsta rap that dominated pop culture at the time, the Good Lifers opted for historically fluent freestyles and test runs for material under the guidance of B. Hall, the maternal founder of the open mic who managed the event with her son Arkane Blaze. Hall also instituted a “no cursing” decree during Good Life nights, even kicking out rappers such as Fat Joe when they visited and thought themselves above the rules. DuVernay’s doc is an irreplaceable document of that movement —established before the 1992 LA Riots, yet focusing that event’s energy into the many nights that followed at Good Life,  a place of no gum on the floor, no leaning on the paintings, and also some of the purest West Coast hip hop values and vibes during the decade of its existence.