Hip Hop: Beyond, Beats and Rhymes

In mediastorm class, Scott showed us the trailer to the film Hip Hop: Beyond, Beats and Rhymes. I got the opportunity to watch the whole film at a theater during a class to get an idea of what to do with my own film. This film is about how a guy, Byron Hurt, used to love hip-hop and then he was watching music videos one day and found out all of them were alike. They had guys with nice cars, throwing money at the camera, and women half naked in the background dancing. He says, “The more I grew and the more I learned about sexism and violence and homophobia, the more those lyrics became unacceptable to me,” Because of this he started making this film that took him six years to make.

In the video you see Byron interviewing famous rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Busta Rhymes, Jadakiss and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. He talks to them about what he has come to notice, about the people he listened to. He also asks their opinion on what they think about the rappers nowadays, the videos, and how they feel about homophobia. 


I think this film is very interesting. It highlights aspects that I agree with. It also made me realize things like how in the music industry there are a lot of homophobics and you don't see many famous gay people in the music industry. They also show women as objects in music videos, they don't value women. I also realized that there is a box in which men seem to follow, acting tough and having to act tough to not seem weak or get called out. In hip-hop there are a lot of rappers who talk about killing people and whenever Byron recorded guys battling or free styling they all seemed to mention the same thing - gun violence. This film showed me that you can use films to bring awareness to social issues. For my film, I hope to bring awareness to how when adolescent boys join gangs nothing good can come out of it. And how they can improve their lives through education.