Are We Close To Hip Hop’s “High Fidelity” Or “Almost Famous” Finally Being Made?
While serious progress has been made since I originally asked this question back in May 2014, what has to happen for Hip Hop culture to get a film that shows Rap & Hip Hop culture the reverence/treats the artform with the respect it truly deserves?
Back when I initially wrote my piece “Why Doesn’t Hip Hop Have A “High Fidelity” Or An “Almost Famous” Yet?” I was watching a grip of films that appealed to music nerds from the great to the not as great (“Bandslam” for instance) to figure out what worked and what didn’t in each film or what commonalities did they all share? As I watched each of these films, “Empire Records”, “American Pop”, “CBGB”, etc. it began to hit me. The two films of the entire lot that were held in the highest regard to music nerds, artists/creatives and journalists alike were “High Fidelity” and “Almost Famous”. The second part was no comparable film existed for either Rap music or Hip Hop culture.
The two Hip Hop films that are held in the highest regard are “Style Wars” and “Wild Style”, both released in 1983. One was a documentary and the other was a film that brought different aspects of a subculture together to present it as one larger scene. This was also the intention of the Edo Bertoglio & Glenn O’Brien film “Downtown 81” but it wasn’t completed and released until 2001. It had been over 30 years since the release of those films and I couldn’t even recall a Hip Hop/Rap version of “The Idolmaker” (1980) or even “That Thing You Do!” (1996) existing. That being the case there definitely wouldn’t be a counterpart for “Grace Of My Heart” (1996) out there.
Rather than try to rationalize why these films didn’t exist I wanted to hopefully spark people to be proactive and spring into action so this would no longer be the case anymore. Rock and to an extent Jazz, Soul/R&B have a reverence or respect level that Rap & Hip Hop have yet to receive. Therefore we can have a “Round Midnight” (1986) or a “Bird” (1988) then have the biopics “Ray” (2004), “Walk The Line” (2005) and “Get On Up” (2014), but the Notorious B.I.G. biopic “Notorious” (2009) already had strikes against it being that it was a film about a rapper and automatically wouldn’t be treated with the same level of seriousness or importance as the subjects of the previous films were. As a result? “Notorious” underwhelmed audiences and made us all realize we needed to go back to the drawing board before we made another Rap biopic.
Several interesting things have happened in the worlds of television and film that can directly impact the current industry landscape and result in the right climate for a film or series such as the one I’m asking for to be created and/or greenlit in the near future. The first thing that happened was Lee Daniel’s surprise breakout hit Fox TV series “Empire” beginning in January of last year. It was supported by the success of the ABC sitcoms “Black-ish” and “Fresh Off The Boat”. In the case of “Fresh Off The Boat”, it was based in 1995 and told the story of a child of Taiwanese-Chinese immigrants who gravitated to Rap music and Hip Hop culture to find his identity based off Eddie Huang’s best selling memoir of the same name. This resulted in him narrating the first season of episodes and a gang of 90’s Rap and pop culture references.
Unfortunately, past the first season Eddie Huang had no more involvement in the show and he stated that didn’t even watch it since his life had turned into a sanitized version of the reality he lived as a teenager growing up and no longer resembled the reality he originally laid out in his memoir. The fight is for creating television that can relay the same feelings that made us fall in love with the music and culture without watering it down and making a toothless, commoditized version of it that removes all of the fire, danger and power of the music that spoke to us a young people searching for a voice.
Black-ish” is actually a clever, well executed Black sitcom that could deliver laughs as well as be used to deliver life lessons and address real world issues thanks to its amazing cast and excellent writing staff. Not only that, but it became a a hit out of the gate and has actually gotten better in its second season. These shows prove that you can’t simply state shows without predominantly White casts aren’t marketable. What we have to instead focus on is the content (of the show/film’s character)…
The next wave of content/television/film that may have completely changed the landscape was F. Gary Gray’s “Straight Outta Compton” which was also produced by Dr. Dre & Ice Cube. A film with an indie feel and a budget of under $30 million dollars ended up becoming the highest grossing music biopic in film history, pulling in over $200 million in global box office receipts (it made $161 million in North America alone). The kicker is the film itself was excellent, the audience for the most part wasn’t extremely knowledgeable of the group more than 20 years removed from their last album together so the film resulted in their back catalogs re-entering the charts. On top of that, Dr. Dre released a new album called “Compton” in conjunction with its release. It was a coup in every way imaginable.
“Straight Outta Compton” transported the viewer to an era when the music had more impact socially, was far more dangerous and before it was fully embraced by the mainstream media. It intrigued younger viewers and brought back feelings of nostalgia in older ones. It will enjoy an incredible run in both retail (digital & physical) plus as a Redbox rental or a Netflix title. More importantly, it will do what “Notorious” couldn’t years before… lead to more Rap biopics to be greenlit in the near future. It only took a few weeks of “Straight Outta Compton” dominating the box office for Warner Bros. to acquire the rights to Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill’s biopic and attach “Empire” writers Carlito Rodriguez and Malcolm Spellman. That was quick!
Moreover, the success of “Straight Outta Compton” the Dr. Dre album “Compton” and his Beats 1 Radio show The Pharmacy led directly to Apple throwing its hat into the ring to create a 6 episode semi-autobiographical scripted series overseen by veteran video director Paul Hunter. There are presently few details other than those currently available about the status of the aforementioned Apple project to be called “Vital Signs”.
Next came the VH1 special/pilot “The Breaks”, set in New York in the Summer of 1990. Rap is in a transition period following the end of the first Golden Era as MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice have made crossover Rap selling millions of units and topping the Billboard charts like no previous Rap group had ever done. This caused a crisis in Rap which led to a backlash against not only watering down your sound in order to possibly cross over but selling out. In turn, everyone was trying to make music that raised the bar and couldn’t ever be mistaken for the commercial drek on the Pop charts.
“The Breaks” was inspired/adapted from Dan Charnas’ book “The Big Payback” and heavily focused on replicating the look, style, feel and aesthetics of New York circa 1990. The premiere viewing on VH1 was a veritable social media event. Complex got behind it, offering promos and behind the scenes content before it aired. It was live tweeted and viewers pointed out cameo appearances and broke down references, venues and the power players in the New York Rap scene circa 1990.
As a result? It brought in 1.8 million viewers in its prime time slot & 800K more viewers for the 11 PM EST replay for the West Coast. “The Breaks” was the #2 Trending Topic on Twitter the night it debuted. It brought in impressive number amongst the coveted 18–34 & 18–49 year old demographics with both men and women making “The Breaks” the 2nd highest ranked original cable film of 2016. It was just picked up to be a series last week when the numbers and the buzz/talk behind it was weighed by the VH1 brass. Looks like it won’t be alone, either…
I went to the premiere of the 2 hour debut episode of “Vinyl”, the Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger co-executive produced HBO series set in 1973 about a record label in dire straits at a crucial time in the music industry. 1973 was the beginning of what eventually transformed into the Disco Era. 1973 was also the year Hip Hop culture began to emerge in the South Bronx. In 1973, Rock journalism was flourishing with publications such as “Rolling Stone”, “Crawdaddy!” ,“Creem”, “Phonograph Record”, “Circus” and Boston’s own Rock magazine “Fusion” . These magazines were all staffed by a growing legion of passionate Rock writers (many of whom would become legends) who in May of that same year attended the ill fated National Association of Rock Writers Convention that was held in Memphis, TN to see Big Star on Stax Records’ dime.
For music nerds, picking 1973 has SO much significance and it is the perfect jumping off point to tell the tale of a music industry in flux where everything is up in the air but great art is still being made. The cast is great, the writing for the first two episodes has been solid and there are so many references to the late 60’s early 70’s as well as crucial artists, movements and recordings in the history of Rock it’s quite literally a serious music fan’s wet dream. I can only dream that Rap gets this kind of treatment and level of respect in the near future.
As I watch “Vinyl” with its amazing ensemble cast, soundtrack, numerous references to artists and seminal recordings those of us who spent serious man hours in record stores have discussed at length I envy the love it was made with and the attention to detail. As a result? A second season was ordered shortly after the airing of the first episode on Valentine’s Day. There are still eight more episodes to go before the first series is complete but I’m already loving it. “The Get Down” has its work cut out for it.
“The Get Down” is Netflix’s foray into the world of music themed television programming. Baz Luhrmann and Shawn Ryan’s series is also set in New York in the early 70’s at the outset of Hip Hop and the Disco movement. Based on the trailer, the hope is that it’ll do justice to the culture but based on Baz Luhrmann’s previous output like “Romeo & Juliet” (1996), “Moulin Rogue” (2001) & “The Great Gatsby” (2013), he prefers to incorporate a lot of fantasy elements into his productions. It works to varying degrees but I’d prefer to see “The Get Down” be grounded a la Marvel’s approach to their series’ “Daredevil” & “Jessica Jones” on Netflix. I’d like to see the campiness kept to an absolute minimum and hopefully the story is somewhat historically accurate. We’ll see when it premieres on August 12th, 2016.
I just recently found out about the Showtime series “Roadies” which is the brainchild of Cameron Crowe. J.J Abrams (“Felicity”, “Alias”, “Lost”, “Fringe”, etc. ) and Winnie Holzman (“Thirtysomething”, “My So-Called Life” & “Once & Again”) serve as producers on “Roadies” which is inspired by Cameron Crowe’s time spent as a wunderkind Rock writer in the early 70’s. The series follows the crew of “roadies” that set up for a band’s shows and outlines all of the behind the scenes work involved with bringing a show to life and the the challenges they face together as a team. The show has an impressive ensemble cast and is penned by Cameron Crowe (“Fast Times At Ridgemont High”, “Say Anything”, “Singles”, “Jerry Maguire”, “Almost Famous”, etc.) but until it begins airing on June 26th, 2016 we won’t know how good it is for sure.
Looking at the present landscape, there’s been a significant amount of progress made in some areas but next to none in others. Case in point? On February 28th, 2016 the 88th Academy Awards (also known as The Oscars) will have to deal with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite (thanks April!) for the second straight year due to the fact no Black actors, writers or directors were nominated in any of the categories. While films with Black writers, directors, writers and protagonists were made and quite a few did well commercially (such as “The Perfect Guy”, “Creed”, etc.) it wasn’t enough to secure any of these films nominations.
This occurence has shamed the industry and forced their hand into finally (albeit reluctantly) taking steps to change things. Out of this environment projects can get greenlit in the near future that will ensure there are Black, Latino & Asian actors nominated in addition to their White counterparts (My early picks are Don Cheadle for his independent Miles Davis biopic “Miles Ahead” and Nate Parker for his highly anticipated Nat Turner film “The Birth Of A Nation” for 2017).
To summarize, back in 2014 I was extremely frustrated with the fact there was no equivalent to either “High Fidelity” or “Almost Famous” for Hip Hop culture or Rap music. At the time, there wasn’t even a foundation in place nor an existing precedent that could set forth the chain of events that could eventually set that into motion. Before I knew it, the first steps were made which resulted in another step being made, then another. Next thing I knew, the momentum kept building with every following month.
I now feel like based on the potential success of these music related projects and surrounding factors I’ve mentioned in this piece, 2016 can without a doubt become the year that directly results in either a project of this type getting greenlit this year and created in 2017 or greenlit in 2017 then entering pre-production. Most importantly, I think that it’s possible for a studio to pick a project that has the right director and producers who can be trusted to do the subject matter justice and give the culture and music that respect it deserves.
If Rap and Hip Hop culture is finally viewed as high art worthy of reverence just like the other American Black music styles that preceded it (Gospel, Blues, Rock, Jazz & Soul/R&B) then it will finally get the treatment it so richly deserves. If that is established, then we’ll be well on our way to seeing what I saw as a dream that less slightly less than two years become a reality. I just hope I can be involved in finally making this happen somehow. Sometimes if you speak things into existence, they might actually materialize...
