This previous yr felt like a rebound yr for the film business. For the primary time in a very long time, big-budget, non-superhero motion pictures transcended area of interest cinephile circles and crossed into the mainstream, particularly Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon and the dual-feature cultural phenomenon that was Barbie and Oppenheimer. Past the field workplace breakthrough, although, was a treasure trove of films serving all sorts of area of interest pursuits.
This yr, Hip Hop celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The style has come a good distance from 1520 Sedgwick, incomes excessive reward and cultural tributes all year long throughout all creative mediums, and films proved no exception.
Yearly, the HipHopDX employees comes collectively to submit its personal year-end listing for music, TV, and films — and there was a plethora to select from in 2023.
Beneath is an inventory of films DX thought have been one of the best to be launched over the previous 12 months, with one particularly standing out as HipHopDX‘s Finest Hip Hop Film of 2023. Evaluation all of our 2023 Hip Hop Award classes right here.
Editors Notice: Finest Hip Hop Motion pictures of 2023 alternatives have been restricted to motion pictures which have been launched between December 1, 2022 to December 1, 2023. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order.
BEST HIP HOP MOVIES OF 2023 NOMINATIONS
The award for Finest Hip Hop Film of 2023 goes to…
Might the Lord Watch: The Little Brother Story
Hip Hop documentaries have been a favourite amongst music followers for years now, however nothing encapsulates the superior age of a once-young style than a documentary a few North Carolina rap group that didn’t even launch music till after the flip of the century. Little Brother have been underground legends, favorites of in the present day’s era’s favourite rappers, and now they’ve launched a documentary, an ode to the nostalgia and affect of early 2000s rap.
The most effective facet about Might the Lord Watch lies in its limpidity. Whereas there could also be a documentary renaissance occurring, savvy public relations experts have used their rise in reputation as a instrument to push narratives. Lots of the hottest documentaries this yr have been from the angle of who the documentary is about — City Meyer seemingly ghost wrote Swamp Kings, for instance — turning an in any other case cool story into a chunk of propaganda.
Might the Lord Watch, in contrast, comes from an out of doors perspective (director Holland Randolph Gallagher has no affiliation with the group exterior of being from North Carolina as nicely), taking an goal stance as followers study the surprisingly uncooked trials, tribulations, and grudges held to at the present time by Phonte, Huge Pooh and ninth Marvel.
RUNNERS UP
All Up within the Biz
All Up within the Biz, a documentary by filmmaker Sacha Jenkins concerning the dearly departed Biz Markie, performs extra like a celebratory montage at a memorial than it does a tragic lamentation of a life lower too quick.
The one-and-a-half hour documentary is ripe with appearances from different Hip Hop legends (Rakim, Doug E. Contemporary, Fats Joe and extra) honoring Markie’s unquantifiable affect and legacy, capturing his jovial and modern spirit. Even among the heavier moments within the documentary, like when Markie’s widow discusses taking good care of him later in life, are lightened in temper by zany inventive decisions, like as an alternative of footage of a sickly Biz Markie, they use a literal puppet.
Top-of-the-line honors you’ll be able to bestow upon a tribute documentary is that it expresses the spirit of the topic with out seeming contrived, which All Up within the Biz has down-pat. It’s not outlandish to assume that Biz Markie himself would’ve appreciated this documentary.
Mixtape
A documentary about one of many style’s most beloved mediums/codecs instructed by way of the lens of institutional adversity and the cultural significance of music communities, Mixtape looks like essentially the most on-brand movie on this listing that encapsulates the spirit of Hip Hop’s fiftieth anniversary.
Hip Hop has all the time been outlined by extra than simply the music; you need to actually be exterior to know, enmeshed within the tradition with all its knots and wrinkles. Mixtapes have been a proverbial playground and advertising and marketing instrument for burgeoning artists and kings of the style alike, particularly on the flip of the century and into the early 2010s. They have been an train in skill and a precursor to the web takeover, now changed by YouTube, SoundCloud and TikTok.
Mixtape explores the anthropology of rap by way of a few of mixtapes’ best champions — 50 Cent, Lil Wayne and DJ Clue, simply to call a number of — in a prescient ode to Hip Hop’s cultural roots and its still-bright future.
Spider-Man: Throughout the Spider-Verse
If mixtapes took place when Hip Hop was nonetheless a fledgling style geared in direction of these on society’s fringes, Spider-Man: Throughout the Spider Verse can function the style’s official entry into the mainstream lexicon of American tradition. It’s been like that for awhile, clearly, however to have one of many biggest-budget motion pictures of the yr soundtracked by Metro Boomin, a younger celebrity producer, is an outward signal that Hip Hop has outlined this period and can proceed to take action for the foreseeable future.
Positive, the film is fan service materials, but it surely’s one of the best but within the Miles Morales period of the film franchise, a newly appointed Spider-Man, but it surely strikes at a ripping tempo, pulling the heartstrings and repeatedly paying homage to the comics of the ’80s and ’90s, which many more moderen superhero movies throw by the wayside.
The true spotlight of the two-hour epic, although, is the Metro Boomin soundtrack, a larger-than-life album meant to be performed at events and arenas that includes a cacophony of his greatest mates: A$AP Rocky, Lil Wayne, Swae Lee, Coi Leray, Don Toliver and extra. The artificial sound hearkens again to a darkish membership someplace in a vaguely alternate universe, an extraterrestrial rating for a surreal movie.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are synonymous with the cultural zeitgeist of the Nineteen Nineties, very similar to Hip Hop. The 2, in the end, are as inseparable because the Turtles are with pizza, so it stands to cause that avowed Nineteen Nineties lover Seth Rogen made a concerted effort with Mutant Mayhem to intertwine the New York dungeon vibes with the grimiest hits of ’90s East Coast boom-bap all through the movie, even evaluating the soundtrack to that of 1 from a Tony Hawk professional skater sport. It additionally stars Ice Dice, Put up Malone, and typically rapper John Cena.
A movie about staying course within the face of insanity, the significance of household, and great thing about self-expression apart, this film takes place within the shadows and underground of New York, and the gritty aesthetic permeates the music decisions as nicely, which will be discovered on this Spotify playlist (the precise rating is an array of orchestral items by 9 Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor).
From absolute hits of the period, like Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” to deeper cuts comparable to “2 Cups of Blood” by the Gravediggaz, Rogen and director Jeff Rowe curate a playlist actually reflective of the plucky and resolute nature that originally endeared the Teenage Mutant Turtles to an enormous younger viewers.
And, simply to pay a tongue-in-cheek homage to the older era watching the film (maybe within the throes of childhood nostalgia), they even included “Ninja Rap” within the movie, a dated and in any other case uninspiring monitor laughably caricaturistic of the early ’90s that Vanilla Ice made completely for the second-ever film within the Ninja Turtles franchise, The Secret of Ooze.
Return to our 2023 Hip Hop Awards web page for extra classes or try this yr’s winners of Finest Producer of 2023, Finest Rapper of 2023 and Largest Comeback of 2023.
Paintings and graphic design by JR Martinez.
Paragraphs written by Jameson Draper.
