By satirizing everything from easy targets like gangster rap, Vanilla Ice and P.M. Sharper, more penetrating and just plain funnier than CB4, Fear of a Black Hat, a micro-budgeted indie film featuring writer-director-star Rusty Cundieff (later of Chappelle's Show fame) is a This is Spinal Tap for the Yo! MTV Raps era. Rap & DJ Polo's "Talk Like Sex" is Weird Al–level genius. More clever in idea than execution, this mockumentary about a trio of middle-class poseurs masquerading as the World's Most Dangerous Group Not Named N.W.A (Rock even sports Eazy-E's trademark jheri curl) is at its best when it's spoofing the songs of the time - "Sweat of My Balls," a hilarious reworking of Kool G. The soundtrack, which features beats produced by Chris Stein of Blondie and Fab 5 Freddy and live performances by Double Trouble and other old-school legends, is arguably the first great hip-hop album.īefore he became the best stand-up comic in the world, Chris Rock's career had its shares of highs (Pookie in New Jack City, Nat X on Saturday Night Live) and lows (the rest of his SNL run). There are vivid performances of Grandmaster Flash spinning records in his mom's kitchen, Cold Crush Brothers and the Fantastic Five trading battle rhymes on a basketball court, and a rousing finale at the East River Amphitheater, where Rammellzee roamed the stage with a shotgun. The resulting class conflict, and questions about authenticity and "selling out," continue to resonate today. Underground filmmaker Charlie Ahearn - his no-budget martial-arts movie The Deadly Art of Survival is worth hunting down - adopted a loosely scripted, cinéma vérité style by casting non-actors and real-life graffiti-writing couple Lee Quinones and Lady Pink as the romantic leads, and Fab 5 Freddy as the impresario who tries to introduce Lee to journalist Virginia (played by the gallerist and downtown aesthete Patti Astor) and Manhattan's gallery scene. No film made before or since has captured the beautiful innocence of early hip-hop like Wild Style.
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