With all due respect to the author: NOPE….I read his article three times. The things that you are complaining about, for the most part, couldn’t have been done in the confines of a six episode season. Of course they couldn’t include EVERY Hip Hop pioneer, B-Boy and method of making break beats in the story. It had enough characters as it was, and adding EVERYONE to the story would have been a bloated cast with too many subplots going on. And again, people are putting way too much weight on the shoulders of Baz…he’s the director of the first episode and showrunner, but he accusing Grandmaster Flash of hatin’ on other pioneers so he could get all the shine? WHAT?! Flash didn’t write ONE episode! You ask why did the story open in 1996….WHO CARES?!!! Maybe there is a larger story on that in part 2 (you know there is MORE to the story, right?). Useless nitpick. I’m a little older. I’m in my mid 40’s, so I was around when a lot of this started, and while this is a very fictionalized and stylized account of how Hip Hop started, I never felt like the production value, acting or writing was “mediocre”…I never felt like this was white folk “throwing us a bone”, and I will never say that someone doesn’t have the right to be critical of a film or TV show, but this article? I can’t roll with it. I was one of the skeptics too. As soon as I saw Baz was the showrunner, I was giving this the side eye even after the first trailer. I felt that this would be white people telling black people how Hip Hop started. I felt that with Baz’s track record, this would be a big, Glee-ish musical that is all flash (no pun intended)and no substance.….then I looked into the show deeper and saw who the creative team was and the fact that it took TEN YEARS to develop this. Then I saw the first episode. WOW…And as a filmmaker myself, your last statement was TELLING.
“ I want to make sure it generates enough revenue that one day soon I might get the opportunity to do the culture justice in a film or television series myself. This is the sad situation we’re stuck with allowing, someone with deep pockets and a global reach but little regard for accuracy like Baz Luhrmann to tell our stories for us..”
WHAT? I’m going to need you to look deeper at the creative team and what it took to get this made before you make the “deep pockets/Global reach” staements. Nobody was fucking with this show at first. The show was written and developed by a multicultural team of writers, many of whom were around during that time. Baz actually took the time to consult with the very people who were instrumental in pioneering Hip Hop. Baz isn’t the sole writer on all of the episodes. You take away the shine of Seth Zvi Rosenfeld, Jacqui Rivera, Lana Cho, Aaron Rahsaan Thomas and Nelson George…just to name a few. Additionally, if you seek to make a better, more authentic film or TV show about Hip Hop, then do that. I plan on doing the same, but I won’t sit in the seat of the scornful and bash every show until mine comes out. If we are “keeping it Hip Hop”, in the words of the MC’s of old and new…brotha, step your bars up. BE the change you want to see in black filmmaking and black stories. Be well…ALL love…
