World star hip hop freaks review9/21/2023 ![]() Doubtless it has already been through several cycles of backlash and anti-backlash among the teens it depicts and they will settle for themselves just how useful a totem Dope will be as they find and make their culture going forward.Īt the same time, the movie is part of our current ’90s vogue - the return of the fade, the deluge of “only ’90s kids will remember” Buzzfeed listicles, and hashtags full of throwback references. This movie was principally touted as a certification of the worth of young black nerds onscreen and off, and whether it works is up to them. If I didn’t find the hilarity enough to outweigh the flaws, that’s largely irrelevant. The film is chock full of coincidences, band camp flashbacks, discussions with white folks about saying “nigga,” some corporate espionage, and a successful admission to Harvard. Despite their best efforts to stay clean, they end up needing to unload several kilos of molly, and the ensuing hijinks are alternately ludicrous and predictable. They have built up a culture of defense by being interested in what the movie calls “white shit”: being particularly good at school (which we don’t see them do) and playing punk music in a band called Awreeoh (which we do). The three kids at the heart of the story - Malcolm, Diggy, and Jib - live in “The Bottoms” in Inglewood. Click here to get your subscription today.ĭ OPE, at the end of its domestic theatrical run, looks poised to become an icon of black nerd culture. To a fan coming up in the era of Cardi or Tyler or Polo G or Playboi Carti, the golden age is now.The following is a feature article from the summer issue of the Los Angeles Review of Books: Magazine. One of the incredible things about hip-hop is that it evolves and expands faster than any other genre in music history. to Houston to Chicago, and beyond.Īs we dug and listened, we found ourselves a little less swayed by “golden age” mystique than we might’ve been had we done this list 10 or 15 years ago. and Rakim and others, through the gangsta era, the rise of the South, the ascendance of larger-than-life aughts superstars like Jay-Z and Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, and on and on into more recent moments like blog-rap, emo-rap, and drill, from New York to L.A. The result was a list that touches on every important moment in the genre’s evolution - from compilations that honor the music’s paleo old-school days, to its artistic flourishing in the late Eighties and early Nineties with Public Enemy, De La Soul, Eric B. When confronted with a choice between the third (or fourth or fifth) record by a classic artist (Outkast, for instance, or A Tribe Called Quest) and an album from an artist who would make the list more interesting (The Jacka or Saba or Camp Lo), we tended to go with the latter option. Relatedly, a list of hip-hop-adjacent albums from the worlds of dancehall or reggaeton or grime would be fun and fascinating, and something for us to revisit down the road. That’s one reason we limited our scope to English language hip-hop. ![]() ![]() But the history of rap LPs is so rich and varied, we were forced to make some painful choices - there are so many iconic artists with deep catalogs, so many constantly evolving sounds and regional scenes. Two hundred seems like an almost luxuriantly expansive number when you’re making an albums list, and in any other genre, maybe it would be.
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