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The gritty drama Turn It Up and documentary Backstage give rap the Hollywood treatment.
By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 7, 2000
Hip-hop music, lingo and fashion, once an underground, inherently edgy expression of African-American oppression, have all but conquered mainstream pop culture.
Consider the rise of Eminem, a white hard-core rapper whose The Marshall Mathers LP, a controversial diary of dysfunction and murderous intentions, is a chart-topper. His subsequent tour, with Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Warren G., drew large, diverse audiences. And the Source Hip-Hop Music Awards, broadcast Aug. 29 on the UPN network, was a ratings hit, helped along by reports of an audience melee.
Hollywood, of course, has attempted to profit from rap's cachet, opening its arms to a handful of stars -- including Ice Cube, Ice T, Nas, DMX, Method Man, Queen Latifah, the late Tupac Shakur -- with varying success. But a gold rush for hip-hop cinema may be on now, if the simultaneous arrival of the gritty drama Turn It Up and concert-tour documentary Backstageis any indication.
The films, in many respects, are two sides of the same coin -- the world of the rap music industry.
Turn It Up follows the efforts of talented inner-city rhymer Diamond (Pras, a Fugees founding member) to complete a demo tape sure to land the rapper a recording deal. He's a perfectionist, stymied by the incompetence of his cokehead engineer (Chris Messina) and pushed to complete the project by Gage (Ja Rule), a thuggish pal willing to gather the $100,000 in studio costs by any means necessary.
Diamond's girlfriend (Tamala Jones) and his long-estranged musician father (Vondie Curtis-Hall) urge him to abandon his criminal lifestyle, but hecan't untangle himself from connections with a Manhattan drug lord (Jason Statham). D's debut recording turns out to be a very pricey project in terms of human lives. Turn It Up offers tense confrontations, competently shot action scenes, a juicy, pumped-up soundtrack and appearances by Shinehead, MTV host DJ Skribble and Faith Evans. But the message, that surviving long enough to make the big score is really all that matters, is difficult to stomach.
Had D morphed into a non-fiction character, he might have been on view in Backstage, a raucous, bawdy account of last year's Hard Knock Life tour with Jay-Z, DMX, Method Man, Redman, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek, Ja Rule, DJ Clue, Amil and others. The tour, featuring galvanizing performances by many of the genre's superstars and hot newcomers, reportedly grossed $18-million and was free of violence and artist cancellations, despite the naysaying of some industry observers.
Backstage handily captures the onstage energy and the same sort of backstage recreation common to big-time rock shows -- drinking, toking, gambling and exploits with groupies. For better and worse, Chris Fiore's cameras seldom blink.
Turn It Up
Grade: C+
Director-Screenplay: Robert Adetuyi
Cast: Pras, Ja Rule, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Tamala Jones, Jason Statham, John Ralston.
Rating: R; violence; profanity; repetitive racial epithet
Running time: 83 minutes
Grade: B-
Director: Chris Fiore
Cast: Jay-Z, DMX, Method Man, Redman, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek, DJ Clue, Amil, Ja Rule
Rating: R; profanity; nudity; sexual situations; drug use; repetitive racial epithet
Running time: 86 minutes