The Biz Doc

If you didn't know, Showtime has produced an original documentary feature about Biz Markie, which just debuted this week.  It's directed by Sacha Jenkins who did that Wu-Tang: Of Mics and Men thing (also for Showtime).   Biz Markie absolutely deserves a documentary, so I'm glad he got one.  I was worried going in that this would be a pretty superficial doc that said he made "Just a Friend" and starred in Yo Gabba Gabba and bounced.  Well, it absolutely does begin with a tribute to "Just a Friend" followed quickly by a clip of Gabba.  But thankfully this doc then proceeds to get it right.

And I went in with my arms crossed, ready to be disappointed.  We've been let down enough by these kinds of projects, and I can't say I place a ton of faith in... Showtime.  In the very beginning, I thought it might be leaning too heavily into big name celebrities and some silly animation, but really I have no complaints.  Juice Crew guys get more time than guys like Nick Cannon and Tracey Morgan; there's some great vintage footage.  They speak to his childhood friends and family, from Diamond Shell to the high school crush who inspired "What Comes Around Goes Around."   They dive deep into his earliest history, show us his famous collection, and even use a "Me & the Biz"-style puppet to reenact his final days in the hospital(!).  Then Masta Ace makes a little "Me & the Biz" sequel, his wife shows us his rhyme books, Craig G and Kane perform original tributes to him.  Pete Nice shows us the Biz pieces in his museum, Rakim takes us to his high school cafeteria where they first met, perhaps best of all, Marley Marl plays us a taste of the first demo he ever recorded with Biz.

Even if you feel like you already know all there is to know about Biz, you should check it out.  I was really pleasantly surprised.

Nick Broomfield's Repeated Attempts To Crack the Biggie & Tupac Murders

You know, there are like a million feature film posthumous documentaries about Biggie Smalls and 2Pac:

• 2001's Tupac Shakur: Before I Wake
  
• 2002's Tupac: Thug Angel
• 2003's Tupac Resurrection
• 2003's Tupac 4Ever
• 2004's Tupac Vs.
• 2006's Remembering Makaveli
• 2006's So Many Years, So Many Tears
  
• 2007's Notorious B.I.G.: Bigger Than Life
• 2008's Notorious B.I.G.: Business Instead of Game
• 2009's Tupac: Reckoning
  
• 2009's Biggie Smalls: Rap Phenomenon
• 2011's Tupac: Thug Angel 2
  
• 2015's Murder Rap: Inside the Biggie and Tupac Murders
• 2017's Biggie: The Life of Notorious B.I.G.
• 2021's Biggie: I Got a Story To Tell

And that doesn't even include their segments in Beef or other documentaries where they're just part of a larger story (Can't Stop Won't Stop, Inside Death Row, etc etc), or episodes of series like Autopsy and Unsolved that've covered the crimes that took their lives.  A&E ran a whole miniseries called Who Killed Tupac? in 2017.  Raise your hand if you've seen them all.  Hmm... nope, I don't believe you.

Anyway, there's two in particular I want to write about today, both made by the same man nearly two decades apart: Nick Broomfield's Biggie and Tupac from 2002 and his latest, 2021's sequel: Last Man Standing: Suge Knight and the Murders of Biggie and Tupac.

Nick Broomfield is an interesting character.  He started out in UK during the 70s making quite good, earnest films like Juvenile Liason and Behind the Rent Strike.  But he started slipping into trashier territory (Chicken Ranch), and his late 80's doc, an authorized behind-the-scenes look at a Broadway show that fell apart before it ever got performed, turned him into a different type of filmmaker.  The only way to salvage his film about a show that wound up never existing was to make himself and the disaster around trying to make a movie without a subject the actual subject.  So there's lots of himself on camera, recording his phone calls about the budget and arguing with the show's producers.  Contemporaneously, he and Michael Moore popularized that kind of semi-autobiographical journey-to-get-the-story documentary, where there's more footage of them being kicked out by security guards than actual interviews.  But, with his bent towards trashier subject matter, he wound up going the more tabloid route, making films about Heidi Fleiss or Sarah Palin where he's really the star.

But his films are still often quite compelling.  It's hard to say what his two documentaries about serial killer Aileen Wournos are about, exactly, but they're fascinating.  And you can see how slightly more credible and establishment-friendly filmmakers like Louis Theroux were kind of born out of his legacy.  So there might be a billion Tupac and Biggie documentaries fighting over the same scraps of legacy footage, but Nick's are unique.

Tupac and Biggie starts out with Nick being refused an interview with former police detective Russell Poole, who he explains retired over not being allowed to investigate fellow LAPD officers possibly involved in the murders.  Broomfield travels back and forth between NY and LA, looking like a bit of a sad sack carrying around his boom mic and sound recorder trying and failing to insert himself into the story.  Lots of footage of their neighborhoods is shot in passing through his car windows, and we get scenes where he walks into a barber shop asking if they knew Biggie and they tell him they don't want to be filmed.  He goes to a supermarket where Biggie worked as a kid and clumsily asks, "was he a good, uh, bag packer?"  He tries to buy unreleased 2Pac songs off a guy on the street, but the cassette breaks so we never hear what was probably a scam in the first place.  And he consistently mispronounces 2pac's name ("two pack") through the entire film.

Still, Broomfield eventually gets some credible interviews.  He asks Biggie's mom if his reference to growing up in a one-room shack in "Juicy" was true, and she tells us, "oh, well, to me, that's a part of an alter-ego. That's the rags-to-riches person that he wants to sing about."  Lil Cease turns up later, and they do end with a prison yard interview with Suge Knight, but only with the understanding that he wouldn't comment on Biggie or Tupac, and merely deliver his message for the kids (which boils down to, essentially, "people make mistakes").  Broomfield doesn't wind up with much evidence at all, or put what commentary he is given under much scrutiny; but he eventually lands on a theory gathered from the small handful of ex-cops who would talk to him: that Suge had some off-duty police officers perform both hits.  And sure, maybe, but it's pretty much all speculation and conjecture.  There's a lot of talk about highly valuable, damning documents that never quite turn up.  Frankly, it's not one of Broomfield's better films.  It's kind of boring, because it feels like Nick is never making much headway towards his goal, or even facing interesting opposition.  He just spins his wheels a bit and then calls it a day.  So I was honestly quite surprised to hear he'd returned to the subject for a sequel, which is still playing in theaters now.

In the opening of Last Man Standing, Nick explains that since Suge has been put away, "people were now opening up to things I couldn't get answered before."  And... I guess?  We've got a lot of low level gang bangers eager to talk about how criminal Death Row Records operations were, but not so much about Biggie or Tupac.  It's all anecdotes from former bodyguards and ex-girlfriends about how Suge had one girl beat up another girl in his office, or bodyguards pretending some guy in a club had a gun just so they could rough him up and take his chain.  He doesn't really talk to any major players.  Suge's message was his biggest get in 2002 (and he replays that whole segment in this film), and this time I guess it's Danny Boy.  Danny doesn't have much to share besides background on Death Row, but at least Nick got him to come in to the studio.

Yeah, interestingly, this documentary takes a different form.  Rather than lots of footage following Broomfield down streets and into offices, this is mostly talking heads-style sit down interviews.  And there's lots of recycled footage from the previous film.  It isn't until about an hour in that we get to the night Tupac was shot.  Broomfield's theory has changed to a rival gang member having killed him, though he still thinks Suge had ex-cops kill Biggie.  In fact, he basically just replays Poole (who has since died after the first film) making the same allegations.  In terms of new revelations into the crime, I'd say Broomfield hasn't uncovered any big, new evidence or noteworthy information.  The point of this film seems to just be to make a correction to his first film, bringing it up to date with the current data and theories.  That's fine, but I don't think any of Broomfield's output is a particularly crucial source of information in these crimes, so I'm still left feeling a little puzzled as to why he felt compelled to revisit the topic.  If you trim away all the repeated footage, old clips and tangential filler, there's barely one documentary's worth of movie between the two.  But at least it feels like Nick's edged closer to the truth over the years.  Combined, the pair of films at least leave you with a decent overview of the facts as we know them.

It might be worth mentioning, too, that the Biggie and Tupac DVD features an audio commentary and interview by Broomfield, plus almost 45 minutes of deleted scenes.  But considering the large amount of padding left in the film, I can just imagine how inconsequential what they cut out is.  Actually, some of it's probably in Last Man Standing.  I'm sorry to say, even if you have a keen interest in the murder of Tupac and Biggie, and/ or consider yourself a Nick Broomfield fan, you probably shouldn't waste your time with either of these efforts.  Especially since there are so many other films on the subject to choose from.

Bad Rap?

Today I watched Bad Rap, a 2016 crowd-funded "feature documentary about the obstacles and successes of Asian-American rappers."  It starts out with a little history... Yes, they briefly summarize Jin and The Mountain Brothers, but they never even mention Fresh Kid Ice, Lyrics Born, Dragons of Edin, Key Kool or any of those Up Above cats, let alone Hip-Hop artists in Asia who've broken out here like DJ Honda or DJ Krush.  And it would be perfectly fine that their backstory was just so short that they breezed over most of the important figures, but their point was that the two or three artists they did name were all there was, as if they'd just thoroughly covered all there was to know.  So it got my back up that they were skipping over so much.  I mean, say what you want about Fresh Kid Ice, but 2 Live Crew were larger than all the guys they discussed put together.  A history of Asian-American rappers that doesn't seem to have even heard of the world's most famous Asian-American rapper?  Weak.  But you already knew I was gonna get hung up on this part, right?  Really, it's a small matter, because that part of the film turns out to be there only to serve as an introduction.

Because the film quickly devolves into a reality TV-style show where we follow four up and coming unknowns where we're asked to pick who to root for.  They only missed one trick by having them training for an "ultimate rap battle" that squares them off as the climax of the movie.  They get close, though, as we follow one of them through a tedious battle rap tournament that grinds the film to a halt for almost half an hour.  There are a couple interesting, genuine seeming moments, like one rapper struggling to convince models to sexualize themselves in his music video, or another who seems to find more success making cooking videos from his apartment.  There's a section where they show their four rappers to some prominent industry people, like Ebro and Riggs Morales, and they mostly seemed to be sincere and give legit criticism.

What'll make this doc of interest to most people today, though, is that one of those unknowns did break out and become a big celebrity - Awkwafina.  Even though this is only four years old (though I'm guessing most of this was shot at least a couple years earlier), it's already a historical artifact: pre-Crazy Rich Asians, Oceans 8, Comedy Central and all that, where we find her performing in local clubs and just starting to get noticed with Youtube videos.  On Netflix, they've changed their thumbnail to a giant close-up of her, even though her role's actually probably a little bit smaller than several of the other unknowns.  She's really a secondary character, even in terms of screen time; so if you're just coming to this as an Awkwafina fan, you're going to be disappointed.

Overall, the doc's pretty short and seems to end kind of arbitrarily.  I definitely would've been more interested if they just expanded the opening history into a full, rich discussion of the legacy and challenges facing Asian MCs, instead of trying to turn it into another sports-style "pick your favorite" doc.  But even if you dig that kind of thing, it gets meandering and sluggish with low stakes and zero tension.  Had the filmmakers kept rolling until after Awkwafina turned into a pop star and could've included that, they would've had more to work with.  Instead, this is the rise and fall of four aspiring rappers who never really rise or fall.

They also never explain why the film is called "Bad Rap."  It's tempting to make the crack that they're just telling on themselves; but to be fair, I wouldn't say any of these rappers are bad (leaving the jury out on how you feel about Awkwafina's skills, since she's clearly aiming for easy-to-follow joke songs).  I guess they mean it in the sense of Asian rappers consistently getting a bad reputation.  But that doesn't actually seem like the picture they've painted?  The movie presents them as being overlooked and ignored, but not exactly treated like hoods or whatever. 

So yeah, Bad Rap is streaming on Netflix.  It's on some other services, too, like Amazon Prime and Youtube, but for a fee.  If you really like the film, it's worth looking into the physical release, since that includes exclusive extras like deleted scenes and extended interview clips.  There are DVD and blu-ray options, though they're both Made On Demand burnt discs, which have shorter shelf lives and have trouble working with certain players.  Still, the blu is definitely the ideal option.  But that's only if you feel like this film is worth it, which I can't say it was for me.

So I Watched Everybody's Everything...

This is my relationship with Lil Peep: he's the guy everybody asks me around the holidays, "hey, you're into rap.  Do you know Lil Peep?"  And I say, yeah a little.  I heard of him when he became too famous not to have heard of 'im, and I checked out two or three Youtube videos, and as you guys could probably predict, his stuff wasn't really my thing.  Then I didn't give him another thought, really, until he passed.

It's a weird (and obviously tragic) thing when a young, popular artist goes right at the peak of their success.  Would they have continued to flourish and cement a superstar legacy, or had we already seen their entire flash in the pan run its course?  Like, when you look at how The Wu-Tang Clan's Beautiful Tomorrow album completely fizzled out even after a huge onslaught of hype.  Biggie and Tupac went out at the very top, but if they hadn't, would they just be two more dull old school MCs unable to capture the attention of the millennial generation in 2019?  And before anybody runs up and smacks me for implying Lil Peep could be on the same level as The Wu, B.I.G. and 2Pac, my point is that he seemed to be for a sizeable number of fans, or at least just one or two more break-out tracks shy, and this got me curious.

Because sure, that sing-songy The Weeknd style has never appealed to me.  Shit, I remember even back when Domino dropped "Getto Jam" and I was like, "I don't like where this is going..."  But at the same time, I try not to be closed minded to a whole style or sub genre.  I remember when DWG was putting out Unique's Die Hard EP, and they said they were just leaving off the synth-y songs.  Sure, dusty old jazz loops are great, but synthesizers weren't born evil.  Hell, the Beverly Hills Cop theme is pure synth, and the only people who don't love that are dead inside.  And honestly with elite, I actually prefer something like "Homonym Holocaust" to "Don't Even Try It."  Sure, "Don't Even" has that classic K-Solo/ Penthouse Playas/ King Tee/ Poison Clan loop you can never go wrong with.  But I'll take Joey Robinson's "cheesy synths" over the After School, anti-drug message rap stuff.

So anyway, my point with all that is: even if it isn't my preferred style, I'm interested if this kid's got some thoughtful lyrics and something interesting to say.  I remember one of tiny handful of Peep songs I checked out ("Life Is Beautiful") being pretty compelling.  And now here comes this documentary, that sounds like a more engaging way to dive in and see for myself if I thought this was an artist who really had something going for him or if he was just the next in an infinite line of Kreayhawns, Mykko Montanas, and every other rapper the kids forgot about as quickly as they blew them up.

But, uh... this movie didn't really help.  It doesn't really explore his art at all, except to say that he started from very humble, low-fi beginnings and people seemed to like it.  But otherwise the doc doesn't seemed interested in his music, that just happens to be what propelled him into the rags-to-riches story they want to tell.  He could've just as well gotten famous manufacturing widgets for all this film seems to care.  There's a bit where one of his Gothboi Clique members said that when he heard Peep for the very first time, his opening bars were so on point, he knew he had to work with Peep.  And then... they don't play those bars!  I mean, come on, that would've been a perfect opportunity for a very quick soundbite to go a long way towards demonstrating what Peep could do.  I wanna hear those bars, but nope.

So, okay, moving on from what the movie isn't, what does the movie actually deliver?  Well, like I said, it's basically another typical rags-to-riches story that ultimately, of course, ends in tragedy.  I mean, if you swap out Peep for another musician we've lost, then you've already seen this movie a dozen times before.  It can get pretty hammy, as they dramatically read these sappy emails his grandfather wrote Peep like narration over half the film, and a lot of the interviews are pretty superficial.  Most people seemed like they just latched onto the fact that he was popular for some - any - reason and wanted to cash in.  There's a scene where one of his managers (or promoters or whoever) said they asked if he wanted to continue making videos or played stadiums, and when he replied that he wanted to play stadiums, that's when she realized that's when he was a real star.  What?  Ask any third grade class if they want to be rockstars and play stadiums, and two thirds of their hands will go up.  Wanting to play stadiums doesn't mean he could or couldn't do so successfully.  Apparently, Peep's next big move was going to be to start a clothing line?  You wouldn't know from this film if he was a beloved songwriter or just another Instagram Influencer.


But there are interesting moments.  His girlfriend has a refreshingly candid little insight into his relationship with his face tattoos and his family seems nice.  The filmmakers have some of his childhood home movies, and he sure was a cute kid.  You definitely feel bad for his mother and grandfather that they lost him so early.  At its best, Everybody's Everything is touching in a Dear Zachary-lite kind of way.  But that's about a third or a quarter of this film, and the rest just feels like a by-the-numbers E! True Hollywood Story that doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know about the guy... even if, as in my case, you didn't know all that much.  And I came in wanting to learn; I don't think you could've asked for a better audience than that.  I think even Peep's fan club will be looking down at their phones during most of the movie.  Terrence Malick produced this?  I expected more.

Learn Along With Werner: The Rap Song That Killed All the Right-Wing Zombies

I still enjoy discovering new artists, and I love going back and listening to my favorite old school records.  But my favorite thing is to discover something that's new to me but dates back to the old school era I grew up in.  So, while I'm not going to try to argue that the song I'm about to talk about is some dope hidden jewel, or even passably good, if you're anything like me, it's still a kick to learn about.

So this story starts with a disappointing 1987 horror film called Zombie High.  It's not really what it sounds like... they only mean "zombie" in the most generic "thoughtless person" kind of way.  It's not a high school full of undead gut munchers.  It stars Candyman's Virginia Madsen, a pre-Twin Peaks Sherilyn Fenn and a very pre-Ghostbusters remake Paul Feig.  Basically our heroes are sent to a fancy prep school where we learn all the students are being turned into conservative zombie-types by the faculty who are really feeding off their brain juice to stay young forever.  You get it.  It's a lot like Disturbing Behavior, or better yet Society but without all the crazy Screaming Mad George shunting effects that made that movie so cool.  Invaders From Mars without the Martians.

Anyway, it ends (spoiler alert) with the last remaining free thinking kids discovering that the bland, classical music being piped through the school's PA system is what's keeping all the preppy students under control.  Fortunately, one of them happens to have a cassette tape in his pocket ("it's a good tape!") of a rap song; and when they play that instead, it literally smokes all of the zombies and their leaders' brains, 'causing them to drop dead.  The film ends with a montage of them all dying as this song, "Kiss My Butt," rocks into the closing credits.  Even the president of the United States (who would've been Reagan in '87) is taken out.

This song is a total "Fight For Your Right (To Party)" knock-off.  From the early rock/ rap hybrid sound to the short, pause-filled stanzas about anti-homework, parental rebellion.  Or actually, it might sound even more like The Fat Boys' "Hell No," which is in itself a shameless "Fight For Your Right (To Party)" knock-off, which was released on 12" in 1987.  "You get up in the morning and your clothes don't match your hair.  They say maybe you should wash 'em, you say you don't care.  They're screamin' in your ears 'till their face turns blue.  You turn around and say, kiss my butt!" ...sounds an awful lot like, "Get out of this house if that's the clothes you're gonna wear.  I'll kick you out of my home if you don't cut that hair.  Your mom busted in and said what's that noise?  Oh mom, you're just jealous, it's the Beastie Boys!" ...which in turn sounds just like, "Coolin' in my room watchin' Yogi and the bear, when my father busted in and said comb your nappy hair.  He gives me five bucks for a haircut and says take a walk.  I know he will be buggin' when he sees my mohawk!"  They all have the exact same shouty delivery and everything.  "Kiss My Butt" ends with them doing an Eddie Murphy impression that at least sets it apart from its predecessors.

Unsurprisingly, when you look it up in the credits, this is not a song contributed by a credible, existing rap group.  This isn't like when they got The LA Posse to do the Waxwork 2 "Lost In Time" rap (although it might deserve an honorable mention on that Top 13 list).  As you can see, the three writer/ performers, Kent Richards a.k.a. Kent Ormiston, Tymm Rocco and Bobby Gabriele are the guys who did nearly all the songs for the movie, and the rest aren't Hip-Hop at all.  They were part of an outfit called LA Musicworks, where studio musicians provide songs and soundtracks for movies and TV shows, so it's not surprising that they would be attracted to the most popular, rock-leaning sort of rap they possibly could've.

But what is surprising, and what's lead me to make this post, is that it turns out they shot an independent music video for this song!  And yes, I found it on Youtube.  It was clearly shot on consumer level video cameras, and is padded with film clips from Zombie High.  But between that, we see the guys in wigs carrying their guitars through the streets of LA and doing motorcycle stunts.  There's also celebrity cameos by people like Leif Garrett and Justine Bateman who, no, were not in the movie.  These guys just had the Hollywood connections, I guess.

Anyway, you guys are gonna tell me this is a stupid song to cover, and I know.  I'm not trying to sell you on it as anything more than that.  Not every post has to be about that, does it?  But it does make me wish that they'd pressed the Zombie High OST on wax, just as a silly collector's item.  Plus, depending how things go in 2020, we might just need this song again.

The Great Hip Hop Hoax?

Boy, it's been ages since I've done a Hip-Hop movie review, huh?  I miss 'em, and I recently stumbled on one that riled up my interest: a 2013 documentary called The Great Hip Hop Hoax.  Right off the bat, I think your first question is, what would constitute the great Hip-Hop hoax?  Eric B taking credit for Large Professor productions?  MF Doom sending out imposters to perform his shows in the mask?  The Made Men's Source coverage?  Joaquin Phoenix again?  The Top Shelf 88 album?  Too $hort's 1996 retirement?  Iggy Azalea's accent?  Willie D's iphones?  Tim Dog's boxed set?  All these seem too small-time to constitute the great Hip-Hip hoax.  So, what could it possibly be?

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.

Top 13 Horror Movie Closing Credit Raps

There's nothing more entertaining, or perhaps cringe-worthy, then when a scary film ends and suddenly somebody starts rapping over the closing credits.  You actually don't see it very often, because metal is the traditional music genre of horror movies, at least in the 80s and 90s, when great horror films and great horror songs mostly came together.  So, when you did come across it, it really stood out.  Rapping during closing credits is a little tradition that started more in comedies, including such classic moments as Goldie Hawn and LL Cool J passing the mic back and forth in Wildcats, Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd exchanging verses in character at the end of Dragnet, John Leguizamo living up to his title in The Pest, or the starts of Richard Linklater's entire cast making goofy rap video at the end of Everybody Wants Some.

But that's comedy; you've seen it a million times in sitcoms, novelty records, commercials, etc.  The joke, inevitably, is: look, these milquetoast nerds have no natural rhythm, but they're rapping anyway!  Ha ha.  Thirty years of the same joke.  But in horror movies, expectations are different.  The mood is dark and serious.  The raps... should be good, right?  At least sometimes.  So here's my criteria of what I'm looking for in my Top 13.

Legit horror movies: Ideally these should be horror movies with some credibility, that horror fans would actually watch and respect.  Da Hip-Hop Witch doesn't count, and neither do horror parodies (I see you, Scary Movie, but you're not making this list).

Legit rappers: It's not essential, because there are some rap amateurs that just need to be included, but they definitely at least get bonus points if they rope genuine, known Hip-Hop recording artists with careers and albums into participating.

Relating to the movie: We want horror movie raps, not just rap songs that somehow got plastered onto a horror movie soundtrack.  Kool Moe Dee wrapping up Nightmare On Elm St. 5 was exciting for a minute, until you realize he's just talking about LL Cool J, not Freddy Kreuger.  The closer the lyrics of the song tie into the film, the better!

...Or at least horror-themed: Short of relating to the movie, I at least want some horrorcore, spitting lyrics about ghosts and decapitations.  We want spookiness, in tone with the movie we just watched, not just some teenager bragging about his car, or some old Steady B love song because the film company had a blanket deal with the record label (I see you, Ghost In the Machine).

Placement: I'm looking for a real theme, here, not just a song tucked deep in the film's soundtrack.  Hearing two notes as a character drives up in his car like Trespass is lame.  I want songs that play in the film's credits, preferably on their own, because they're the final element to the film's telling of the story, not some afterthought.

You feel me, right?  I think these are reasonable expectations.  So without further ado, let's jump into

Top 13 Horror Movies With Closing Credit Raps:

13. Dr. Hackenstein's "The Hackenstein Rap" (1989. Available on wax? Yes!) - This one's at the bottom of the list because it's loose with some of the criteria.  Dr. Hackenstein is clearly sort of a horror parody, and there's no real rappers on here (just composer Claude Lehenaff with female vocalist Karen Clark).  But how could I leave it off?  The song was released on 12" with a glorious picture cover, which is better known now than the original film that spawned it.  "The Hackenstein Rap" itself is fairly disco-y, and there's at least as much singing as there is rapping; but it's pretty dang fun, and definitely works as a theme for the film with a chorus that goes, "he wants your body for his wife; he wants to bring her back to life, yeah!"  There's even an exclusive remix on the 12".

12. Scream 2's "Scream" (1997. Available on wax? Sort of! The soundtrack was released on CD and cassette, and there's a bootleg white label pressing of this particular song.) - Points deducted for not making it on the original Scream's soundtrack, and even more points deducted for lyrics that have nothing to do with film-obsessed serial killers.  But they got Master P (and Silkk the Shocker) to release a "Scream" song when they were at the peaks of their careers, so that's pretty impressive.  They just rap about how hard they had it growing up, but there is a scream sound effect in the hook, and in the music video (yes, there was a music video for this), they rap in front of the iconic Scream mask and mix in some cool Mardi Gras death mask imagery.  It's just too bad the song sucks, particularly the way P lays his "uggh" sound into the screaming hook, killing the energy of it.

11. Seed of Chucky's "Cut It Up" (2005. Available on wax? No, but the soundtrack album's available on CD with this song on it.) - This song would be higher on the list if this were anywhere close to the original Child's Play, but I'm letting my prejudice against the later Chucky films hold it down.  There was actually a sort of rap song planned for the original film's soundtrack, but they decided not to use it at the last minute.  But we got this!  Fredwreck (yes, the guy who used to produce The B.U.M.s) gets busy over the film's closing credits, and yes, his song is all about Chucky.  Of course, we all know they should've gotten Bushwick Bill and Gangksta N.I.P. for this; but hey, these guys really seem to understand the appeal of a horror movie rap theme and go for the gold.  So they earned their place on this list.

10. Popcorn's "Scary, Scary Movies" (1991. Available on wax? Nope.) - This film reaches #10 primarily for being such a fan favorite horror film with the peculiar sensibilities to end in a rap.  So it's a beloved moment for fans, and they pay homage to horror films with a lot of enthusiasm, but they're hardly great MCs.  Like a couple other songs on the soundtrack, it's performed by Ossie D & Stevie G, a reggae duo who were certainly good sports and rapped "American" for this one, using rough, grimy voices to include some amusing, specific references to the film like, "blood sucking insects hanging from a rope, get electrocuted by the Shock-O-Scope!"

9. Phantasm RaVager's "Reggie Rap" (2016. Available on wax? No.) - Yes, Phantasm recently came back with a new sequel, and this time they ended with a rap song.  It's performed by somebody named Elvis Brown who has a Soundcloud with more of his songs here, and the "Reggie" of the title refers to the series' hero Reggie, who travels the country, pursuing The Tall Man with his four-barrel shotgun.  It scores some big points for being an enthusiastic horror rap and crafting lyrics that stick tight to the films, but loses some for autotune and Doug E. Fresh having beaten them to the punch of turning the Phantasm theme into a rap song by about 30 years.

8. The Fear's "Morty's Theme" (1994. Available on wax? Hell yes!) - The only reason this entry isn't even higher on the list is that it's such a crap, disappointing film.  The premise is cool: a bunch of characters gather together to face their fears in a weird therapy session, but their fears all come to life and take them out, ultimately personified by a wooden man they call Morty.  Wes Craven cameo'd in it, and I know I wasn't the only one who thought this was going to be good; but it wound up being cheap and dumb.  Mostly dumb, with really bad acting.  Admittedly, the even worse sequel made this film look a little better by comparison, but nope.  Not nearly enough.  Anyway, the soundtrack album is an essential who's who of horrorcore, including tracks by everybody from The Gravediggaz to The Headless Horsemen.  And the ultimate honor of crafting the film's titular theme song fell to horrorcore legend himself, Esham.  And it kind of rocks, managing to bring Morty and the film's story into the verses without making it seem like a gimmicky novelty rap.

7. Lunatics: A Love Story's "The Reynolds Rap" (Available on wax? No.) - It was hard to decide where to put this one on the list, but ultimately I felt it belonged pretty squarely in the middle.  The main thing holding it back is that this is just barely a horror movie, if it qualifies at all.  But it's definitely a cult film by horror veterans with some strong horror elements.  Essentially Ted Raimi is a lunatic, who meets a beautiful woman and falls in love when he realizes she's crazy, too.  But to be with her, he has to venture outside of his apartment and battle all of his delusions he encounters along the way, including a giant killer spider and Bruce Campbell as an evil doctor.  Helping this song immensely is the fact that director Josh Becker hired the legit, underground rap group Detroit's Most Wanted ("City of Boom" was probably their best known record) to perform his lyrics.  Better still, this film doesn't just play uninterrupted in the film's closing credits (though it does), DMW also appear in the film as themselves, assaulting Raimi with their rhymes in his crazy fever dreams.

6. Monster Squad's "Monster Squad Rap" (1987. Available on wax? You bet.) - Look, Monster Squad is a silly but high quality, quite enjoyable movie.  So the fact that the "Monster Squad Rap" is super corny is appropriate.  Anyway, that's my excuse for having such a bad rap this high on the list.  I mean, say what you want, but fans treasure it, as evidenced by the fact that this soundtrack has been repressed on wax several times in the last couple of years.  The rock-ish hook and clunky rapping is super cheesy but catchy in a way that's perfect for a movie where a bunch of kids team up with Frankenstein's monster to save the world from Dracula and The Creature From the Black Lagoon.  Put alongside serious Hip-Hop, sure it's tripe; but it's an essential component of a great horror flick for young adults.

5. Maniac Cop 2's "Maniac Cop Rap" (1989. Available on wax? Yes!) - I once got to ask William Lustig about who the actual rappers were on the "Maniac Cop Rap," but unfortunately he didn't remember.  Just some guys that composer Jay Chattaway brought in for the day.  According to the credits themselves, they're Yeshua (Josh) Barnes and Brian (B. Dub) Woods.  Anyway, everyone deserves credit for making a rip roaring rap theme for this rare sequel that's even better than its predecessor, with Josh and B kicking fun raps about the killer cop ("when he shows up, he's supposed to protect ya, but Maniac Cop is out to get ya. He's an anti-vigilante and they can't convict him, so watch out, Jack, 'cause you're the next victim!") over a beat that makes excellent use of Chattaway's classic theme from the original.  This blew my mind when I first heard it pop up in the credits back in the 80s, and I'm still not completely over it.

4. Deep Blue Sea's "Deepest Bluest" (1999. Available on wax? Of course, and you already own it.) - No surprise to see this on the list!  This song's pretty bit infamous, though it helps a lot if you recognize the line, "my hat is like a shark's fin" from his 1988 classic "I'm Bad."  Anyway, this whole movie is famous for being enjoyably dumb.  It's about super genius sharks fighting underwater scientists, and LL Cool J plays a ridiculous cook with a parrot as his only friend.  Samuel Jackson has one of the most famous deaths in film history, and this clearly inspired the whole Sharknado and rip-offs craze that swept the nation.  But still, LL's theme song managed to outshine it all.  There's a 12", a music video and everything.  LL's mostly just rapping about being a vicious rapper, and doing a genuinely good job of it, and incorporating the film's violent shark imagery to do it.  Unfortunately, that hat line struck everyone as so silly, it went down in history as a joke song.  But that also secured its place in history - it's certainly the most famous song on this list - so I guess he can't complain.

3. Waxwork II's "Lost In Time" (1992. Available on wax? No, but the music video's included on the latest blu-ray release.) - I'm tempted to list this even higher, but I realize the world may not appreciate this quite as much as I do.  Director Anthony Hickox brought in The LA Posse, the group that spawned Breeze and The Lady of Rage, to perform the theme song.  Does it follow the film's plot?  Oh yes, and they deserve extra credit for that, given how eccentric this film's plot is.  Better still, Hickox directed a complete music video for the song that plays over the credits, so The LA Posse are rapping in the film's many exotic locations, and the movie's stars, including Gremlin's Zach Galligan, are dancing with the posse.  The beat's pretty dope, too; though the ridiculous lyrics prevent it from being taken seriously at all.  But as part of Waxwork II, which is itself quite tongue-in-cheek, it works!

2. Hood of Horror's "Welcome To the Hood of Horror" (2006. Available on wax? No.) - Look, I was pretty disappointed that Snoop Dogg's Nightmare On Elm St knock-off Bones couldn't make this list.  It does have a a good rap theme song ("The Legend of Jimmy Bones" by Snoop, Ren & RBX, and produced by Seed of Chucky's Fredwreck), but they don't play it over the credits or anything.  Instead, Snoop closes the show with a generic song called "Dogg Named Snoop," which has nothing to do with the film or anything horror-themed at all.  But fortunately he fixes that with his second horror film, Hood Of Horror, where he pulls a Waxwork II, making a whole video for the song to play under the credits.  Unfortunately, the movie's not the best; and it's not exactly one of Snoop's greatest hits, but he comes off pretty well over a slow, dark beat.  It would fit in nicely on any horror mixtape.

1. Nightmare On Elm St 4's "Are You Ready for Freddy" (1988. Available on wax? For sure!) - I know The Fat Boys were too crossover and kid-friendly to please some heads, but they were genuinely talented.  Granted, this was past the time they started working with credible producers like Kurtis Blow and Marley Marl and were drifting into major label rock guys' hands, but they still knocked it out the park with this one.  I mean, they actually got Robert Englund to rap in character as Freddy on this one.  And I love the detailed lyrics that really show they're intimately familiar with the films ("even in part three, the dream warriors failed, and Mr. Big Time Freddy Krueger prevailed. It was just about that time, I know you'll never forget what he did to the girl with the TV set!"), which is more than you can say for most soundtrack songs, horror or otherwise.  You've got Buff beatboxing, a music video with the real Freddy in it, and they work the film's original soundtrack expertly into their instrumental - what's not to love?

Honorable Mentions:

Bad Biology's "So You Wanna Make a Movie" (2008. Available on wax? No.) - Frank Henonletter, the man who made Basket Case, made his comeback with a film co-written by RA the Rugged Man.  RA's been referencing Henenlotter's work for decades, and appeared on some of his DVD special features, so it was only a matter of time until they made a movie together, I guess.  Unfortunately, the film's weird mix of exploitative horror and trashy Hip-Hop sensibilities just added up to something juvenile and disappointing.  I mean, Vinnie Paz's acting is just like you'd think it would be.  But given his participation, it was a given RA would also have a rap song for the credits, but it's not really about Bad Biology's story.  Maybe that's just as well in this case.  Instead it's about the hardships of making an independent film, in essence a theme song about the making of this film.  That's an original slant, props for that, but by the time you hear it in its context, it just feels like more of everything that went wrong with this picture.

13 Ghosts' "Mirror Mirror" (2001. Available on wax? Nah.) - Neither a great movie nor a great rap theme song, but at least they tried.  Rah Digga, who played a sizeable supporting role in the film, naturally comes back to rap up the closing credits.  Unfortunately, it's not about the film's plot or horror at all; it's just about overcoming life's challenges.  She does make a reference to seeing her grandmother again, like a ghost, and there's a little theremin-like sound in the track, so it feels like she's throwing in little token semi-references to the movie, but that's even worse, because it just makes it feel like a lazy, half-assed song.  Like, be about ghosts or don't, but don't try to play both sides of the fence.  Nice try, but nobody wants to hear club raps like "I can live like a baller" on a bloody horror movie.

Leprechaun In the Hood's "Ride Or Die" (2000. Available on wax?  No.) - Obviously this movie had to get at least a mention.  It's a campy mash0-up of horror and "hood" movies with a rapper named Postermaster P for a main character and Ice-T in a leading role.  Leprechaun himself even raps at the end of the movie... but before the closing credits and the film's underwhelming outro song by some dudes called The Boom Brothers.  It's not great, but they do at least include the leprechaun in their lyrics.  Interestingly, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (the sixth actual Leprechaun movie) just plays traditional score over its closing credits, although of course it does have some rap on its soundtrack, including a song by Zion I.

Other films that didn't make the list but rate a mention include Psycho 3, which has a very strange little rap song tucked away on its soundtrack called "Dirty Street."  Shark Night ends with a music video that starts after the closing credits where the film's lead actors make a terrible rap video (though fitting with the film's campy, junk TV nature).  And Japanese pop rock band Sekai no Owari pretty much rapped (in English, no less) through the closing credits rap Attack On the Titan with their song called "Anti Hero," guest produced by Dan the Automator.  But it's more iffy if the film counts as horror (it's more of a dystopian YA fantasy actioner), then if the song counts as Hip-Hop.

Also there was a 2000 film called The Convent, which I naively saw at a screening when I was young enough to believe that when the producers said their film was just like Evil Dead to expect something comparable.  Anyway, Coolio had a small role in it as a cop, and the film ends with an original closing credits rap by him called "Show Me Love."  But it wasn't a horror-related song at all, and a couple years later, he wound up sticking it on one of his albums called El Cool Magnifico.

Besides Scary Movie, there are other horror-related comedies with rap themes, including Ghostbusters II, which had songs by both Run DMC and Doug E Fresh. And there's the Addams Family movies, which made music videos and everything for their theme songs by Hammer and Tag Team. The screenshot at the top of this article is from M. Night Shymalan's The Visit (an unacknowledged knock-off of the 80's movie Grandmother's House), where the lead kid raps us out during the closing credits.

And finally, no I didn't forget.  Tales From the Hood.  What a disappointment.  It should've had a soundtrack like The Fear, only with even bigger artists, which it sort of did.  But instead of horrorcore/ scary songs, it's just dark hardcore and gangsta rap.  The closing credits play Scarface/ Face Mob, and the title track is by Domino, who doesn't wind up rapping about anything scary at all, let alone something having to do with the actual film.  Admittedly, it's a solid soundtrack album just taken as a collection of original songs by the day's biggest rap artists; but I just can't shake how let down I felt that it copped out since the day I first bought it.

Raheem the Vigilante Raps for King Ad Rock

In 1989, when The Beastie Boys had just exploded into mainstream popularity with their Def Jam records, corporate America was watching. And just like they've attempted to cash in on young pop stars' popularity by casting everyone from Elvis to Vanilla Ice in their own films, so too did King Ad Rock get to star in his big budget star vehicle. And really, if you watch any of these movies - from Britney Spears' Crossroads or Eminem's 8 Mile all the way back to Mamie Van Doren's Untamed Youth and before - they're essentially the story. Underdog youth has major family issues and runs counter to the status quo/ authority and usually specifically the law, only to discover the specialness within themselves, choose good friends over bad friends and overcome their circumstances. It's pure teen pandering, of course, since that's who these movies are aimed at, since their casting their heroes.

Well, Lost Angels is no exception, it's got every cliché in spades. Ad Rock comes from rich Californian parents who don't understand him. They're divorced and treat him like an outcast because he's in a gang (who strangely pretend to be Latin), even though he really doesn't want to hurt anybody and is just following along because of peer pressure. He falls in love with a bored rich girl (her mom tells her to clean her car, so she drives it into their swimming pool), who seems out of his league, but really she's just another troubled teen in with the wrong crown. He gets into a gang fight and there's some legal scenes which really make no sense if you think about them (his father walks into juvenile court with a paper bag full of pills his mother is abusing, dumps them on the floor, and so Ad Rock is sentenced for having them, even though nobody even suggested he they were his). So he's sentenced to a silly juvenile detention center, where Donald Sutherland is the one good doctor who cares about the kids and teaches Ad Rock to be a good person, while ironically learning the same lessons apply to his own life as well... essentially the Robin Williams role in Good Will Hunting.

It's all dopey and trite and very 80s. It's full of voice-over monologue of Ad Rock pontificating about what jerks adults are, and gang members who look like the cast of Fame. Despite it all, some scenes are well directed: well shot, dramatically staged and with good use of music, probably because it's directed by Hugh Hudson who directed Chariots of Fire, as well as some more questionable films. But his talents are usually evident even if his stories are sub-par. Sutherland is easily the best actor in the show, when we finally get to him. Other cast members seem to be struggling with just how straight or broadly to play it: are they satirizing clueless parents and doctors or playing real people? Some seem to have chosen A while others tried for B. And Ad Rock himself? It's a pretty bland, low key performance, but for a non-actor, he manages to slip through most of the drama without embarrassing himself.

Lost Angels is a fairly obscure film these days, and most people who know of it only do because they're diehard Beastie Boys fans who've tracked it down .But in 2012, it was finally released on DVD... or at least DVD-R, in its proper widescreen aspect ratio through MGM's MOD program. So you can at least order it in its OAR from places like amazon.

Still, If you're going in hoping for any Beastie Boys music, prepare to be disappointed. He doesn't rap at all in the film. They do show that he's a graf writer and so still kinda hip-hop, and his gang always hangs out in a big nightclub. So there's heaps of opportunity to shoehorn in the ol' typical scene where his buddies shove him on stage and he shows us how he's this artistic phenom, and at the same time makes the girl fall for him (he instead does this just by dancing with her). But no, there's none of that. There's also no original Beastie Boys song written for the title theme, or even a teensy clip of "Fight for Your Right To Party" playing in the background.  No Beastie music at all.

There is a lot of pop music and even a soundtrack album, but it's all stuff by groups like Happy Mondays, The Cure, Soul Asylum and The Pogues. There's only one rap song on there at all, and it's actually by Raheem. The Raheem who used to be in The Geto Boys. Fortunately, it was also released as a single, so you don't have to buy the whole crappy soundtrack album to check it out.

The song is called "Self Preservation," and it's not on either of his albums, though it's still been released by A&M Records and Rap-A-Lot. 1989 would put it a little closer to The Vigilante than The Invincible, and it has more of that vibe to the song. Produced by Bryan New, who did a lot of big stuff for Jive Records, and Rap-A-Lot regular Doug King, it's pretty hard and message-oriented, though a little too guitary for my hip-hop purist tastes. But it's got nice, huge drums and the guitars are at least scratched in samples (Jimi Hendrix, I believe), not some studio musician noodling around. It's sort of like early Paris or Esham would use guitars in their early work - in fact, I'm pretty sure they both have sampled these exact same riffs - and they're cut up during the hook; so overall it's actually pretty strong.

Raheem raps from a more negative perspective of a disenfranchised youth fed up with the system... I'm not sure I fully subscribe to this theory, but it's possible that he's specifically written this song for the film and is rapping as the main character. But he does refer to himself as a "vigilante," and he doesn't really follow the film's plot or get too specific with the references. In other words, he doesn't rap, "my crazy girlfriend actin' the fool, just drove her car into a swimming pool," which is good not just because that line would be awful but because it makes the song relatable and effective outside the context of the Lost Angels movie.

The 12" features a couple different mixes. They're all essentially the same music and lyrics, but you get an Instrumental and a couple different edits of the track. Most notable is the Dirt Cheap Edit, which is a pretty substantially extended version, doubling the length of the song. So that's just another reason you're better off with the 12" rather than the full soundtrack album. Because "Self Preservation" is definitely at least worth checking out, which is more than I can really say for Lost Angels.

The Story of Ice Cube's Raiders' Cap

30 for 30 is some ESPN sports documentary series. Each episode is like an hour long and the topic's different every week. As a non-sports fan, I only know even that much because I just looked it up. But as a hip-hop fan, one episode is actually quite compelling, especially since each episode is sold individually as a stand-alone short film on DVD (although note that Amazon's currently replaced them with DVD-R versions), so you can pick it up with zero investment in all the golf, ice-skating, and whatever the rest of the series focuses on.

The episode/ short documentary film in question is Straight Outta LA (2010), directed (and narrated) by Ice Cube. And yeah, we all remember his sole past directorial effort was The Players Club; but don't let that scare you off. This is a tight, sincere film where Ice Cube gets to address the very noticeable connection between west coast gangster rap and The LA Raiders. But because it's got ESPN behind it, it also has the capital to bring in just about everybody from John Madden to Snoop Dogg for interviews. There's just tons of players, coaches, journalists, gang bangers, team owners and rappers on hand - and that's not even including all the vintage footage they've got to work with.

It's almost an embarrassment of riches. I can see a lot of smaller filmmakers putting something like this together, but this flick has the resources to really do a stand-up, definitive job. Breezing through topics from the history of the Raiders moving from Oakland to LA, to hip-hop's expansion to the west coast, some pretty names are brought in for some pretty short soundbites. You can tell Cube is struggling to fit the whole story into an hour-minus commercials. For the most part, that works in its favor, giving the film a very fast, watchable pace. But at the same time, it does make it feel a little too superficial. It would be great if we could just sit and visit with some of these interview subjects for more than fifteen seconds at a time.

It's too bad the DVD couldn't have included an expanded director's cut. But as it is, it still manages to plumb some interesting depths, like how the Raiders started making money just as a fashion brand thanks to gangster rap far beyond just team merch. We get to hear the Raiders' marketing guy talk about first meeting NWA and giving them team swag to wear in concert. Even people from other sports are introduced to talk about how their teams changed their colors to black and silver to get on that bandwagon. And we hear how it all started to slip away because the Raiders started losing games. Maybe it's a bit glossed over (Ice Cube talks so briefly about leaving NWA he doesn't even mention Jerry Heller), but it's all here. There's even a weirdo animated segment [right] on the origin of NWA's name.

The arc of the story is dramatically effective, too. Lawsuits, in-team disputes, schools banning Raider gear as being "gang affiliated." And as the film winds up showing us fiery footage of the LA riots, I had to admit, Cube did a great directing job. He introduces the film by claiming that even if you don't care about football or hip-hop, this doc will grab ya, which is kind of an obnoxious way to start a film. But he turned out to be right.

And it ends exactly the way I would've wanted to end the film!  ;)

InstaRapFlix #38: Da Hip Hop Witch

Yesterday, I set in on an Eminem documentary that turned out to not be all that bad... I was pleasantly surprised to find a film its makers seemed to actually care about. But my expectation for a crappy Eminem movie has left a hole... One that I'm confident will be filled today, by Da Hip Hop Witch (Netflix Rating: 1 star).

This movie is... incomprehensible. It's two things. One, a terrible, terrible Blair Witch Project knock-off/ parody. Secondly, it's one of those hip-hop pseudo-documentaries that's really just comprised off rappers caught off guard giving quick drops to a dude with a camcorder. Both, taken on their own, would make for pretty detestable films. But combined, they're cinematic gibberish. We get random footage where it's not even clear how it's supposed to connect or relate to the other footage we've seen.

The premise, such as it is, is that there's a Blair Woods-like witch that used to haunt Newark. It's come back now ten years later (later then what? who knows) and only kills rappers. Oh, and it now appears in every inner city across the world, a line only explained by a title to card, presumably to justify the cameos from rappers from other cities. So we get random footage of rappers like Ja Rule, Ras Kass Vitamin C, Professor X, Vanilla Ice, the Made Men and Eminem saying things like "oh yeah, I saw the witch. She was scary!" Rock from Heltah Skeltah leans out of his car window to tell us he's on the hunt for the witch, somehow, some way, which never connects to anything else in the film.

At the same time, there's a wacky pack of five schticky characters (the girl with the red hair is named Rave, etc) and a pug named Pug from Salem on the hunt for the witch, like the three teens in the Blair Witch Project. Meanwhile, there's scene after scene of a group of music producers (actors, this time) brainstorming a gimmick they can get rich off of. And then, there's a long, terrible segment about a fake hip-hop news show, which seems to have been filmed in the offices of Rap Pages(!), with some of the worst acting I've ever seen - and believe me, I'm used to ultra-low budget horror flicks from decades past. These office scenes were really the point where my brain started to scream "abort! Abort!" and climb out of my ears.

So yeah, just to reiterate, none of the rappers really interact with the plot or the central film. We just cut to them over and over for some completely unrelated commentary. They do make some attempt to connect them, which only makes things even dumber, by saying that the hip-hop reporter is being locked out of the rappers' offices (for fear that she might be the witch!), so only her cameraman is allowed inside. So that's why nobody from one set of footage ever interacts with the people in the other set - it's all part of the story!

So, somehow the gang from Salem hear that the music producers who need a gimmick are offering ten million dollars for the witch because it's regularly attacking their artist, so they go to New York. Oh, and this film also keeps cutting to some girl looking out her window. I can't figure out who she was supposed to be. There's a montage of the reporter reading different articles from an issue of Rap Pages (which the Salem gang are also shown reading) - nothing makes any sense! Footage repeats, and we see people say the same things at different points in the film like we're not supposed to notice!

The hip-hop show stops being a hip-hop show and even though they've been covering the witch, they now don't know anything about it until an assistant brings them the story. Again, the story we've been watching them cover all along. Anyway, they're not interested until the president of the company, Mr. Krump, sexually harasses some women and announces, "my kids keep talking about this hip-hop stuff! Do we have any stories on hip-hop?" So the assistant is made into a reporter and told to uncover the hoax of the witch, because they think it's all a lie perpetuated by some gangster named Mr. Big Z who "owns the streets" and is taking half of the music producers' deal. And there's also another assistant who gets hired, who's gunning for the first assistant's job, and the Salem kids are trying to blackmail the gangster. Some crack addict goes undercover as an Atlanta rapper to get with the producers, tells them she knows about the Salem kids, but he recognizes her as somebody, and some character named The Street Don dies. And no, I didn't just spoil the ending; it keeps going and I'll leave the rest unsaid. Honestly, I couldn't figure it out what was going on, and I was literally taking notes. Holy fuck, how does a story this empty get so convoluted?

There are some interesting rappers featured in this... artists we almost never get to see, including Diezzle Don and most of The Outsidaz (Pace, Azz Izz, Rah Digga, of course Em). We even get to the Out House studio and all; but it's basically worthless, because they don't get to say anything except these stupid, meaningless and inconsistent anecdotes about a fictitious Black Witch. It being such a frustrating, wasted opportunity is the insult on top of the injury.

This movie has absolutely zero redeeming values. It's never scary, intentionally funny, unwittingly funny or remotely interesting. The acting is awful, the dialogue is all improvised garbage. The rappers are all wasted cameos. The footage is all handheld, low quality camcorder level material that's terribly lit. I'm sure 95% of the people who've seen this film did not watch it all the way through from beginning to end uninterrupted. It's just torture.

And amazingly, this has been released on DVD three times by three different studios in the US alone. A-Pix, Artisan and Artisan/ Lion's Gate in 2000, 2003 and 2004 respectively. They're all available on Amazon for a penny, and they're all drastically over-priced. The A-Pix disc has a banner going across it claiming it's the Full Frame Version, but they're all full-frame. It was shot full-frame. Stay away from this movie, don't help it make any more money. Don't even watch it for free... on a dare. It's really that bad.