May 11, 2007
The breakdancing film Inside the Circle, a favorite at the recent Maryland Film Festival, currently lacks distribution. But as a movie it dances rings around The Hip Hop Project, which also premiered at the festival but opens nationally today. The Hip Hop Project tells the story of an educational program that began as part of the New York-based Art Start and culminated in the iTunes release of the soundtrack this week.
The director of The Hip Hop Project, Matt Ruskin, faced a multitiered challenge. The program's founder, Chris 'Kazi' Rolle, aims to rescue rapping from gangsta fantasies filled with violence, misogyny and materialism - and at the end passes the baton to a student, Diana 'Princess' Lemon. Kazi wants to find talented students and take them outside the circle, creating a new space for self-expression as well as fresh material for the form.
Kazi is part self-help guru and part entrepreneur, and there's inspiration to be found in his character-building, art-gestating sessions. But as a documentary, the film is woefully underdeveloped. Only after I spoke to one of Kazi's key proteges in the movie, Christopher 'Cannon' Mapp, did I learn that Kazi and Cannon went to the same high school.
We should see Kazi blanketing the school with fliers and then pulling off a benign bait and switch. Cannon said Kazi drew kids in with the prospect of making their own rap album, only to confront them with a regimen devoted to character building. The movie rarely connects you intimately enough to Kazi's strategizing or the group's music-making.
Cannon's song about his mother's multiple sclerosis seems to erupt out of nowhere. It feeds the cliche of art and For example: CNN, Newsday, Fox Sports, New York Times, etc.
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