InstaRapFlix 13: South Beach Raw

Wow... Beenie Man, Jay-Z, Doug E. Fresh, Wyclef Jean, Lil' Kim, Ja Rule, Chopperyoungcity (who?), Twista, Trey Songz, Naughty By Nature, Black Eyed Peas, Slick Rick, The Game, Trina, Aaliyah, 50 Cent, Mobb Deep, Usher, Diddy, Memphis Bleek, Timberland... all in one 60-minute movie? A movie with opening and closing credits and host segments? That must mean each artist gets about one to two minutes of footage each! Yeah... that should be your first tip-off about South Beach Raw (Netflix rating 1.5 stars).

What you get is a hostess, "your girl" Lola... who seems pretty inebriated. I think the producers just literally just picked her out of a crowd and got her to read some lines for five minutes. She does a funny ramble about "did you see my ring? it's real. I got it; it's mine. It's not fake. Girls ask me where I got it. But anyway." So, throughout the movie this Lola is taking us back with "vintage" (before L'il Kim's surgery, Lola points out) performances and interviews. Basically, very short clips of handheld concert footage (all from the same charity event, btw), sometimes with some very random IMovie effects added. Aaliyah's clip was so short, you don't even see her sing. She just walks across the stage and is like, "hey;" and that's her entire appearance in the film. The sound is off the camera's mic, so it's blasted into staticy feedback whenever a song starts.

There's also a four or five random music videos thrown in the mix.

Wyclef's dancers do a little fencing routine, which is kinda fun. Though from where the camera angle is, you can't see that it's Wyclef performing during their bit until the song's over. As for the "Raw" in the title, don't let the box art fool you. This is pretty sexless (about the most is Trina wearing a bikini in her "Pull Over" video). I think the "raw" refers to the fact that it's all shaky, amateur concert footage.

At the end, Lola tells us she'll be back. Maybe that's when she intends to show the rest of the artists listed on the box that don't actually appear in this film: Beenie Man, Ja Rule, Memphis Bleek... maybe they were standing somewhere behind Jay-Z during his clip? It's hard to tell, because the guy holding the camera was often pretty far from the stage, behind a bunch of other people. But, considering the write-ups this one has gotten online, they'll have to spend a few years hiding from angry customers before they can come out and start work on a sequel.