Hip-Hop’s Big-Screen Breakthrough

Whereas Wild Style used a dramatized approach to explain hip-hop music and graffiti art, Style Wars went the documentary route. Directed by Tony Silver and originally shown on PBS, the film follows a group of writers, dancers, and other urban creatives who were expressing themselves out on these streets. Silver gives us quite the grand, sweeping opening, with the image of a train coming out late at night, set to Wagnerian orchestral music. As the train goes down the track, the streetlights catch the illustrations that graffiti writers have made on its exterior.

Many New Yorkers weren’t digging this new form of public art. In the movie, mayor Ed Koch holds a press conference announcing an anti-graffiti ad campaign that preaches, “Make your mark in society, not on society.” This includes PSAs in which Héctor “Macho” Camacho, Irene Cara, and other celebrities advocate against graffiti. Silver interviews a detective who disapproves of these property-desecrating designs. “Is that an art form?” he asks. “I don’t know. I’m not an art critic. But I can sure as hell tell you that that’s a crime.” The recently deceased ex–MTA chairman Richard Ravitch also shares his sentiments, saying these spray-painters would be more useful to the city if they picked up some brooms and sponges and cleaned up their messes.

What those authority figures failed to realize was that, for many graffiti writers, bombing was a far less violent alternative to crime. They were using the city as a canvas, expressing themselves and what they were experiencing as inner-city youth. Throughout the film, adults condescendingly dismiss the work these kids were putting in. Skeme, the graffiti artist best known for creating “all city” pieces that would be seen on subway cars across New York, is interviewed in his kitchen along with his mother, who can’t stop showing her contempt for her son’s artistic endeavors.

But these kids weren’t knuckleheads scribbling nonsense, and the downtown art scene eventually began showcasing their work at gallery exhibitions (former tagger Jean-Michel Basquiat already had several one-man art shows before Wild Style’s release). They were aspiring artists who only had one another to turn to for motivation and guidance. In one scene, a fourteen-year-old gets teary-eyed as his sixteen-year-old mentor tells the camera that he could be another Picasso. It makes you wonder how far these youths would’ve gotten if the city embraced their artwork instead of condemning it.

If Wild Style and Style Wars are the most authentic filmed representations of the hip-hop movement that was happening in New York, Beat Street and Krush Groove are the Hollywood versions. It was only a matter of time before Tinseltown showed up to see if it could turn this hippity-hop into profitable product. Break dancing crossed over before rap did once the Rock Steady Crew pulled out their moves in the 1983 hit movie Flashdance. A year later, Cannon Films, the genre studio known for Chuck Norris movies, released the successful Breakin’ and its sequel, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Roger Corman’s New World Pictures also got in on the break-dancing craze that same year with Body Rock, which featured nighttime-soap star Lorenzo Lamas playing a B-boy.

Unlike those films, Beat Street (1984) and Krush Groove (1985) were made with people of color both behind and in front of the camera. Harry Belafonte had been approached with a script called The Perfect Beat by Steven Hager, a former New York Daily News reporter, and went on to become the producer of the project. Renamed Beat Street, the story was supposed to be a gritty look at music and menace in the South Bronx, but Belafonte eventually enlisted other writers (including Andrew Davis, who would go on to direct such action movies as Under Siege and The Fugitive) to make the narrative more positive and uplifting. Black TV director Stan Lathan, whose résumé includes Sanford and Son, Miami Vice, and Dave Chappelle’s Netflix specials, was called on to take the helm.

All of the elements of hip-hop are represented in the three main characters: graffiti writer Ramon (Jon Chardiet); his DJ/rapper pal Kenny, a.k.a. Double K (Guy Davis); and Kenny’s little brother, B-boy and break dancer Lee (Robert Taylor). Along with their deal-making pal Chollie (Leon W. Grant), these Bronx guys strive to succeed as young independent artists. While Ramon struggles to take care of his family while bombing around town, Kenny’s musical skills and Lee’s dance moves catch the attention of a young composer and choreographer (Rae Dawn Chong) who incorporates some of their flavor in a show she’s working on.

Instead of using actual hip-hop music, Belafonte got together with Arthur Baker, who had previously worked with Afrika Bambaataa, to provide the songs and score. But even if its soundtrack isn’t authentically hip-hop, Beat Street does feature appearances from such old-school greats as Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five, the Treacherous Three (which included LL Cool J archrival Kool Moe Dee), and DJ Kool Herc, the guy who is often credited with starting this hip-hop ish.

Harlem producers Doug McHenry and George Jackson got Warner Bros. to sign off on Krush Groove, bringing in Black sitcom writer Ralph Farquhar to work on the script and veteran Black filmmaker Michael Schultz to direct. The movie is essentially a heavily dramatized account of the early careers of Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, the young moguls who started Def Jam, one of the most influential record labels in hip-hop history. Multiple plotlines intersect. First, there’s Russell Walker (a stand-in for Simmons, played by Blair Underwood) trying to keep his label Krush Groove afloat by getting money from a ruthless loan shark (Richard Gant) and his muscle-bound goons (B-Fine and Paul Anthony, from the ’80s band Full Force). There’s a love triangle that forms between Walker, Run (of Run-D.M.C. fame), and an up-and-coming wunderkind played by Sheila E. (who performs two songs cowritten and coproduced by her mentor, Prince). And then there’s a lighthearted subplot involving the Fat Boys, a Brooklyn trio who were popular for their comedic, self-deprecating tunes, playing high-school lads trying to make it as MCs. As if this weren’t enough, the film also includes cameos by future Def Jam legends LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys.

Neither Beat Street nor Krush Groove was a critical favorite. Longtime Village Voice writer Nelson George called Beat Street “awful,” and Krush Groove was disliked even by Russell Simmons, who coproduced it. Despite this and modest box-office returns, these movies did leave a deep impression on those who saw them. They had a significant impact abroad, introducing hip-hop to Europeans—the German rapper Trettmann has said he’s seen Beat Street about thirty times. And both were important as test runs for African American filmmakers and for the very idea of hip-hop movies, which were still rare at the time. They paved the way for younger Black filmmakers who grew up with hip-hop; when Spike Lee, John Singleton, Allen and Albert Hughes, and Reginald and Warrington Hudlin entered the fray, they had a template for what they could achieve. These directors went even further, making successful movies that not only featured rap on the soundtrack but also showed how much hip-hop had become an inescapable influence on African American culture.

Considered in the context of hip-hop’s anniversary this year, the contrast between the you-are-there immediacy of Wild Style and Style Wars and the dramatic embellishments of Beat Street and Krush Groove is particularly revealing. The films are time capsules of a cultural renaissance still in its infancy, and together, they show us what hip-hop truly was back then and what Hollywood thought it was. With all the history-making talent showcased in these four films, it’s hard not to marvel at the artistic ingenuity and sheer ambition that propelled this now-global movement forward.