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Laying on the table while the doctor flashing the light
I feel an injection and they robbed my baby like a thief in the night
I woke I seen the crooks they left without a trace
And the evidence they left was a puddle of blood
I felt bad even though I co-conspired the crime
Sometimes I wish it was me instead of my baby that died

The third individual featured in The Hip Hop Project is Rolle himself, who is so passionate and irresistibly likeable he lights up every frame he's in. When he takes a trip to his native Bahamas, the film begins to fill in the blanks of his past. Abandoned by his mother at six months old, young Chris ended up in a children's hostel and eventually foster care. A failed reunion with his mother left him homeless in New York City at 15. Rolle acknowledges that, for all the progress he's made in his life, his unreconciled relationship with his birth mother continues to hold him back. "I can't rise if I got weight on me, you know?" he admits, just before he journeys to his mother's house in one of the movie's most powerful scenes. She seems incapable of giving her son the connection he needs—it's hard to say whether it is the awkwardness of being filmed or simply an emotional stunted-ness that holds her back—but Rolle is able to forgive and ask for forgiveness in an astonishing display of grace.

A rapper works the crowd

The Hip Hop Project is of course also about the music business. Def Jam Records founder Russel Simmons becomes a financial backer for the project and challenges the participants to avoid the misogyny, violence and materialism of gangsta rap and offer something fresh. (The fact that he's made millions of dollars on the kind of music he derides makes his input ironic, yet strangely credible.) Simmons also brings Bruce Willis into the picture, and the two men provide the cash-strapped project with a recording studio. (Willis eventually executive produced the film, along with Queen Latifah.) '80s rap icon Doug E. Fresh, Rolle's own mentor, appears briefly. So does MTV personality Sway, who enjoys some of the film's lighter moments providing media coaching and trading attitudes with the kids.

By far the most eloquent representative of the music industry is Robin "Kheperah" Kearse, a former employee of Def Jam and Arista who becomes The Hip Hop Project's champion and Rolle's girlfriend. Kearse is able to articulate the power of hip hop (both as a cultural movement for an entire generation, and as a form of healing for the subjects of the film) in an amazingly lucid way, and her commentary is an invaluable contribution to the film. She is also, as the woman who loves Rolle, an important part of our protagonist's evolution.

The Hip Hop Project makes forceful statements about art and urban decay, the music industry, abortion, parental abandonment, culture wars, and individual perseverance over obstacles. But perhaps its most compelling message is about the importance and power of community. Rolle claims the project's participants spent the first two years primarily learning to trust each other, and the film's audience is privileged to watch his group of scrappy orphans pray and cuss and fight and stay together. Long before the participants could become recording artists, they needed to become family. "We all get into emotional ruts, into quicksand," Rolle tells his protégés. "You need people to pull you up."

The Hip Hop Project, for all its technical challenges and flaws, triumphs in shouting that message.

Talk About It

1. The members of The Hip Hop Project are, for better or worse, incredibly real with one another. Do you have a community (or even a single friend) you can be completely authentic with? If not, what steps could you take to find that sort of relationship? Would you want to? Should you want to?

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