Hip-Hop Films

By: Bobby Wise

Hip-hop films primarily feature the aesthetics and culture of hip-hop while also featuring hip-hop music as a score. Hip-hop artists commonly appear in these films as lead actors and the films are concerned with urban stories about and related to African-American youths of the post-civil rights era: the hip-hop generation.

You can read my article on the subject here:
http://bit.ly/fAGuIZ

An interesting article from the Canadian film journal “Cinephile”. Though I disagree with the label “hood film”:
http://cinephile.ca/archives/volume-4-post-genre/the-geography-of-melodrama-the-melodrama-of-geography-the-hood-films-spatial-pathos/

Review of the film “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal” published at the website Not Coming to a Theater Near You. Touches on the film “Style Wars” with some interesting ideas:
http://notcoming.com/reviews/graffitiremoval/

Moving Image Source article on hip-hop films that doesn’t really cut to the heart of what the genre is all about yet still discusses some important films.
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/beats-rhymes-and-film-20110630

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review of “Boyz n the Hood” that essentially brushes the film off while criticizing Singleton’s depiction of women:
http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=7317