Breaking In

Hip-hop and rap began life in the early 70s in predominantly working-class black communities in the Bronx, New York. DJ Kool Herc is credited with the genre’s creation through using turntable techniques to extend percussive breaks. The musical techniques and sound associated with the genre would continue to evolve and change with time. His collaborator, Coke La Rock, rapped over the breaks. Many party attendees also performed what is now called breakdancing. From there, the music became a popular live feature at parties. In 1979, the first recorded and widely circulated hip-hop tracks emerged, with songs like Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight.

Despite starting as party music and vehicles for an artist’s skills, Hip-hop also spoke about social and political issues. Namely, racism, class, police brutality, and it humanised people painted as criminals.

Cinema began intersecting with hip-hop and rap in the early ’80s with films like Wild Style and Style Wars. This focused on another artistic expression associated with the movement, graffiti. Through documentary (Style Wars) and the combination of live performances and scripted narrative (Wild Style), these films acted as documents of the environment that produced hip-hop. As well as the genre’s early music and style. 

Taking Over

As the 80s went on, hip-hop spread across the world. In the US, artists like LL Cool J and groups like Run-DMC topped the charts. Additionally, MTV eventually began programming shows devoted to the genre. Hip-hop was popular, and film producers took notice.

The film Breakin made over $38 million on a $1.2 million budget. Beat Street and Krush Groove enabled directors Stan Lathan and Michael Schultz to showcase their perspective on the genre to a wider audience, and Run-DMC had their own star vehicle in 1988’s Tougher Than Leather. At the same time, hip-hop songs were being used to market blockbusters. See The Fat Boys’ Are You Ready For Freddy marketing A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.

Then, in 1989, Do the Right Thing came out. Spike Lee’s film is steeped in hip-hop style, music and politics. It discusses topics like racism in working-class communities and police brutality. Features noticeable use of graffiti and makes heavy use (diegetic and thematic) of Public Enemy’s Fight the Power. It succeeded commercially and critically. Proving that hip-hop and film could be powerful partners.

Culture And Industry

Since the 90s, hip-hop, rap and cinema have become inseparable. Genre stars, including Tupac Shakur (Juice), Ice Cube (Boyz N the Hood), Queen Latifah (Set It Off) and Will Smith (Men in Black) and more, headlined acclaimed movies. The genre was part of the DNA of New Black Realism and informed modern world cinema. See films like La Haine (France), Kneecap (Ireland), Mogul Mowgli (UK) and the films of Ryan Coogler and many others. Hits like Straight Outta Compton dramatised hip-hop group N.W.A’s story. Meanwhile, the Spider-Verse films feature hip-hop heavily as part of Miles’ world. Artists like Eminem, Three 6 Mafia and Frayser Boy and Common have won Oscars. Kendrick Lamar’s work on the Black Panther soundtrack was also nominated and marked as the start of a new renaissance for movie soundtracks. Hip-hop and rap music are also commonplace within film marketing. 

This is just scratching the surface of the immense impact of hip-hop and rap on cinema. Yet despite all this, the genre’s main architects and audience, black Americans, are still underserved by Hollywood. Roles for black artists, in front of and behind the camera, are still disproportionately low in the US. The executives making the bulk of the money from the artists’ work are still overwhelmingly white, and little is being done by mainstream cinema to achieve hip-hop’s more radical goals. Hollywood will use rap and hip-hop to sell tickets, but will also happily discard artists when convenient. Still, for all the corporate attempts at co-option, there are still earnest uses of the music to give voice and enjoyment to the unseen and downtrodden. That is when cinema truly embodies hip-hop’s spirit.

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