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The Hip Hop Project Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for strong language and some thematic content) Genre: Documentary Theater release: May 11, 2007 by THINKFilm Directed by: Matt Ruskin Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes Cast: Chris "Kazi" Rolle, Diana "Princess" Lemon, Christopher "Cannon" Mapp, Doug E. Fresh, Robin "Kheperah" Kearse Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Chris "Kazi" Rolle was a homeless teenager struggling at a "last chance" New York City high school when he found Art Start, an innovative program designed to reach at-risk kids through the arts. Art Start gave Rolle a chance to voice his anger and pain, as well as his hopes and ambitions, through rap music.

After several years of involvement (and personal evolution) in the program, Rolle established his own branch of Art Start, first known as Word.Life and eventually called The Hip Hop Project. The Hip Hop Project movie documents the efforts of Rolle and the project's participants to write, produce and release their first collaborative album.

Chris 'Kazi' Rolle

Early in the film, Rolle admits that the leaders of Art Start took a chance when they let a young man with a troubled past head up a new endeavor. "Pressure either busts pipes or makes diamonds," he says, with a charismatic grin that hints at which way it turned out. The Hip Hop Project is, fittingly, the story of diamonds in the rough; it takes an inspiring look at the ways a group of disadvantaged but talented adolescents turns pain into art, and need into community.

First time director Matt Ruskin has a great but rather unwieldy story to tell. Many films have mined this sort of teens-redeemed-through-constructive-outlets-and-a-caring-mentor territory (Freedom Writers, Coach Carter, and Take the Lead come to mind). But unlike those fictionalized dramas, The Hip Hop Project must follow unscripted, unpredictable, and sometimes unsavory twists and turns in the lives of its participants. The director faces the daunting task of documenting both the group's creative struggle (over a period of several years), and the individuals' compelling but sprawling back-stories.

Christopher 'Cannon' Mapp

Ruskin is not always up to the task. The film's chronology is confusing at best, and some of the peripheral players are never really defined or contextualized. Early in the film, Ruskin seems to substitute reenactments and montages for in-the-moment documentation. Although his use of stylish color saturation and various motion effects is eye-catching, it creates an odd slickness that keeps the viewer one degree removed from the story. Fortunately, as the film develops, Ruskin wisely begins to focus on a few key individuals, and the documentary finds a more raw and immediate tone better suited to its subject matter.

One of those individuals is Christopher "Cannon" Mapp, an intelligent, expressive teen (he is 14 when he joins the group) coping with his mother's MS-related decline and eventual death. His masterpiece is "Once Had It All," a gut-wrenching rap that describes with brutal honesty the ravages of his mother's disease and its effect on him. The lyrics give graphic details of his mother's condition ("She couldn't do something as simple as go to the toilet to remove her bowels/To me—That's … foul"), and yet convey the young man's sense of injustice with poignant restraint ("I felt God acted inconsiderately").

The film documents Cannon's legal battle with an unethical landlord for the right to continue renting his mother's apartment, where he lives with his grandmother and toddler-aged niece. We get our best sense of the young man in scenes shot inside the apartment, where he argues politely with his grandmother over his poor grades, declaring with male adolescent bravado that his inevitable success in music will make an education unnecessary. As grandmother and grandson each make their case to the cameraman, the audience gets to enter the kitchen—and the lives—of these very real people in a very authentic way.

Diana 'Princess' Lemon

Another rapper featured in the film in Diana "Princess" Lemon. Princess is also 14 when she joins the project; by the film's end she is in her first year of college. She lives the four intervening years under the weight of two heavy burdens. The first is her father's incarceration for drug trafficking, and her fear that he will receive longer jail time or get deported. The second is her angst over an abortion, and the film returns several times to her piece "A Mother's Cry." Although it's doubtful the filmmakers would identify themselves with the pro-life cause, Princess' lyrics (and her pain) are a powerful treatise for the sanctity of life:

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