Hip Hop’s 50th Birthday: The Culture And The Film
Wild Style
Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing laid it out plainly: hip hop is more than music. It’s a way of life. 2023 marks Hip Hop’s 50th birthday and it’s come a long way from its humble Bronx beginnings in the early ‘70s. Today, the music genre has evolved into a multimedia and multiform culture involving dance styles, streetwear, and even film. The 1982 film Wild Style made hip-hop history as the first hip hop motion picture. It featured early hip hop’s biggest names, like Grandmaster Flash and Fab 5 Freddy, and showcased some of the culture’s key elements, including MCing, graffiti, turntablism, and b-boying. Wild Style marks the beginning of a long line of films exploring hip hop and its culture. Hip hop has left a complex legacy in film; the crossover between the worlds has benefitted both industries and enhanced African American storytelling in film. Many rappers saw just as much success on screen as they did on the mic, making acting careers a popular path for rappers who age out of the music scene. At the same time, some hip hop films perpetuated negative stereotypes about Black people.
The world’s first hip hop film, Wild Style is a love letter to early hip hop culture. Its low budget quality and loose narrative make it more of a documentary than a feature film. With much of its dialog improvised and it being shot entirely in and around the Bronx, with real rappers and artists playing themselves, Wild Style is a raw glimpse into the hip hop world. “I wanted to show that for a culture to be complete, it should combine music, dance, and visual art,” said Frederick Brathwaite (Fab 5 Freddy), the film’s co-writer, co-producer, co-star, and musical director. The authenticity of the film paid off as it saw a lot of success at the box office, opening in 1983 as the second highest grossing movie in New York City after Term of Endearment. Hollywood imitators followed through the ‘80s, trying to capitalize on a culture they didn’t completely understand. Joel Silberg’s Breakin’ (1984) was one of the more successful attempts, inspired also by the 1983 documentary Breakin’ n’ Enterin’. Breakin’ features Ice-T in both the film and its soundtrack, which marked Ice-T's first performance on an album. When it opened, Breakin’ ranked number one in the box office, out grossing Molly Ringwald’s Sixteen Candles and becoming the eighteenth top-grossing film of 1984.
By the ‘90s, hip hop had a louder presence in film, corresponding with its large presence in ‘90s life and media. The golden age of hip hop nicely coincides with the golden age of Black cinema and television, as the mid-80s to mid-90s saw films by Black directors that star famous Black rappers. John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood (1991) features Ice Cube and Ernest R. Dickerson’s Juice (1992) features Tupac Shakur, two films that were significant in how they portrayed Black neighborhoods. Where Wild Style and Do the Right Thing were more comedic, full of art and music, Juice and Boyz are violent crime dramas. Boyz especially maintains its cultural relevance as a seminal film highlighting the violence and racism of South-Central Los Angeles and the tense mood before the 1992 LA Riots and serves as a larger critique and observation of low-income urban Black America. Films like Boyz (known as hood films) stirred up a lot of controversy. Singleton defended Boyz against claims that the work was somehow responsible for violence because it depicted it. “I didn’t create the conditions under which people shoot each other,” Singleton said at a press conference. “This happens because there’s a whole generation of people who are disenfranchised.” Despite the controversy, Boyz brought Singleton a lot of success as he became the first African American and the youngest person to have ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. Boyz also launched Ice Cube’s career in film, allowing him to go on to co-write and star in the comedy film Friday (1995).
One of the most successful hip hop films in recent years is Straight Outta Compton (2015), a biographical drama about the notorious Los Angeles rap group N.W.A. and its members Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Ren, and DJ Yella. Like Boyz, the iconic biopic faced a number of controversies. Accusations of colorism in the casting calls and violence on set during filming spurred tension off and on set. Still, it was a smashing success in the box office and awards arena, making $201.6 million on a $28-$50 budget and winning several awards including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture and the MTV Movie Award for True Story. The film finished first at the box office in its opening weekend and set the record for the best opening for a film by an African American director. The soundtrack for the film, which features a mix of N.W.A. songs and its members’ solo music, reached number one on the Top Rap Albums chart and peaked at number one on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums in its second week. The film, truthful and thrilling, is as timeless as N.W.A.’s music remains today. Just as Wild Style was a love letter to the Bronx’s hip hop art scene, Compton admires the West Coast hip hop scene in the same light: early in the film the camera smooths across a room of vinyl records and sound mixing set, a beautiful shot that lands on young Andre Young (a.k.a. Dr. Dre) vibing to Roy Ayers Ubiquity’s 1976 song “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” atop a pile of records in full Dodgers fan gear. The details of Compton and Wild Style prove that there is as much artistry as there is violence and poverty. If rappers use their music to tell the gritty and uncomfortable truths of their communities, filmmakers do everything around that, telling the stories that come before the music, and what happens after the song ends.
Hip hop soundtracks also serve to elevate and enhance storytelling in films, particularly films which center on African American characters. Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) had a soundtrack album that was just as successful as the film, being cited as part of a larger “soundtrack renaissance.” The album, which was produced by artist Kendrick Lamar, is a good example of the symbiotic relationship between hip hop music and film, as it amplifies the storytelling of Black Panther while also holding its own ground as a work of art. One of the songs on the album, “King’s Dead,” won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance. Lamar’s verse in the second part of the song, although emulating the motivations and anger of Black Panther’s main antagonist Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), also serves to extend his own music’s narrative, the song relating to topics he covered in his album DAMN. The song’s double meaning shows the power and inherent closeness between hip hop and Black film.
Celebrating 50 years of hip hop in the film industry means exploring the ways hip hop as a music genre and a culture has impacted film and vice versa. Hip hop has inspired and enhanced filmmaking, the medium expanding the way hip hop is understood as more than just violent, but a culture of visual, auditory, and storytelling art. Hip hop artists have also found homes in films as more rappers appear in films and even make their own. The impact of hip hop on filmmaking and the industry has grown in the past 50 years, and as the genre and culture continues to expand, its presence and influence on the film industry will continue to grow as well. Happy Birthday, hip hop, and thanks for everything!
