Well, the disappointing aspect is that it's actually smaller time than any of those. It's about how rap duo Silibil N' Brains lied their way into becoming a major success story. But I've certainly never heard of these dudes, and I think any of you visiting my blog would at least attest that I tend to know of even many of the more obscure groups, right? It can't be too impressive of an industry success story if you the documentary has to tell you how huge they supposedly were.
That said, this film isn't entirely pulling its premise out of its ass. Apparently these cheap Eminem knock-offs did lie their way into a record contract with Sony Music, wasting a lot of money before their album was scrapped (hence their obscurity). This feels a lot like Hot Karl's Interscope story (and musically, they sound a lot like Hot Karl, too), but with an extra twist. The gist is that these are two young rappers from Scotland, and after flopping an audition for Warner Bros, they went to London and claimed to be from California. And once people believed they were American rappers, everybody gave them a break they couldn't get as Scots.
It's kind of interesting. The filmmaker gets substantial interviews with the two guys, their girlfriends, and even the executives who signed them. Hot Karl's signing wasn't based on a lie he had to keep up at all times, so that definitely gives these guys' story a more novel twist. They always spoke in fake accents. At one point they claimed to be friends with D12 (why they didn't pick a California-based group is beyond me), so their label had them open for them when they came to the UK. And they had to keep making excuses to stay in England because Sony wanted to bring them "back" to the US to record their album, but they couldn't reveal that they didn't have America passports. So it's kinda fun.
But it's ultimately spread a little thin. The biggest thing these guys seemed to do was a single interview on MTV's Euro channel. If these guys had hit records out and fooled millions and billions of adoring fans for years, this would be a great hoax. As it is, it feels like a 30-40 minute story stretched out to a feature film-length running time. And it doesn't help that this film seems hellbent on positing that these guys were talented enough to be huge stars, but bias against Scottish rap was holding them back. So, by pretending to be American, they were exposing the industry in a big way. But we hear their music throughout the doc and they suck. Their flows and production are passable, in a shameless knock-off kind of way, but their constant punchlines are painfully contrived and lame:
"If she didn't drop to her knees, your mom would have a huge bust. And when she wears a yellow coat, kids think she's a school bus. She ain't fat, though, she's just humongous boned. From space she looks like a country on her own."
Eminem would never write that, and he should be insulted by the comparison. And that quote is one of the ones this film highlights to show just how talented and clever they were. "Rappers having no fun are no one; they're probably coming out more overdone than Posh Spice and David Beckham's son." Somebody shoot me.
This film also struggles because it was made long after the pair's story had ended. So they weren't able to film any of the events as they happened, instead relying on lots of cheap Flash animation to tell large portions of the story. And this doc doesn't exactly dig deep. Like, if they want to show that the music industry is prejudiced against Scottish musicians, they could've talked to other acts from Scotland who could've talked about the struggle to break out of the local scene, or how they even wish they could've faked being American to gain access, too. Or interviewed the D12 guys and asked if they remembered their meeting with Silibil N' Brains. Or just... anything. It feels like the whole doc is centered around two guys at a bar telling us what a big deal they were and we have to take their word for it all. Worth a quick watch, I suppose, but surely we have greater hoaxes than these two.
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Well, as soon as you say that they lied their way into a record contract, you actually underline the point made by the film; How the music sounded was not important!
ReplyDeleteThat they did not make it all the way to the very top, is of minor importance...