Beyond beats and rhymes download

Documentaries coming soon Watch Trailer. Watch Trailer. I wanted to share what I had learned about gender with other black males in my community, so in , I produced and directed the documentary I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America , a film that examined black masculine identity in American culture.

But hip-hop had not yet become the pop culture success it is today, and I Am A Man did not address its impact on the masculine identity of young black and Latino men from the hip-hop generation. In the past five years, I have gathered thoughtful, divergent voices discussing this topic, including celebrity rap artists, industry executives, rap fans and social critics from inside and outside the hip-hop generation.

I look forward to continuing this dialogue and the future participation of audiences who watch this film.

This program was produced by God Bless the Child Productions which is solely responsible for its content. New York Times, Dec. San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. Washington Post, Feb. The transition of Hurt from the interviewer asking questions to the commentator criticizing the interviewees is repeated in the film more than once.

This technique is common among social action documentaries and often follows a social engineering desire to raise awareness about a particular issue. To be fair, this is totally within the mission of the documentary and its educational mission.

I think that such an approach is not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be addressed when one engages this film for classroom use. The film needs to be recognized as a commentary on hip-hop music with definite authorship and little multi-vocal content.

The flow of the film is also one of its strengths. The editing has a good flow, and there is significant content that will contextualize the message of the film. The questions about the social effects of rap are constructed by the commentary provided by the producers and consumers of the music in a nicely balanced dialectical ebb and flow of opinion.

Indeed, many fans of the more hardcore rap are not attracted to the music due to the warm and fuzzy content of the lyrical content that is found in these songs. Hip-hop has moved into global circles, and the musical productions of rap in places such as the United Kingdom, France and South Africa could present a very different picture of how things are said and how they are lived. The film also skirts the issue of class, at times missing the fact that such hyper-masculinity is also found, though expressed differently, in American heavy metal and country western music.

White fans are constructed as ignorant, playing at cultural mimicry while enjoying the privileges their backgrounds have provided. User reviews 1 Review. Top review. This is one of those documentaries that is much too short and only goes so much into one part of an issue to make an impact.

The subject matter - looking at what manhood means in hip-hop and rap and, by extension, what it means if that manhood gets questioned or, worse yet gasp if there's femininity or homosexuality in that world of music - is important, and the filmmaker Bryan Hurt has the noblest of intentions. He is also a I say happily since, from even my limited perspective I know somewhat about the current state of rap and hip-hop if for no other reason than that's what is now a major chunk of pop music today, still, after these decades , rap has changed in the decade since this came out.

How much the internet has grown is a big part of that, but it's also that as a culture, as much as some people ranting and raving on Twitter on both sides, both liberal and conservative in the black and white worlds , newer voices are being accepted like Frank Ocean and Kendrick and Kanye and even rawer ones on the female side like Nikki Minaj who may be like the example of a rapper in the opposite direction, but it occurs to me typing this the director here doesn't get a single female rapper on camera as I can recall, and I'm pretty sure they were not like the great white elk of the genre.

It has some good music video clips sprinkled throughout, most notably of Nelly's "Tip Drill" which I didn't even know was a thing , and even DMX even here, in , Donald Trump makes a goddamn cameo for a few seconds, thanks DMX , and some insightful interviews with the likes of Chuck D, Eric Michael Dyson, one gay rapper who's name escapes me now, sorry and Talib Kweli.

At the same time though, it's not indicative of things how they are now, and maybe it was only a sampling of what was back then. The production quality is decent but unremarkable - it got played at Sundance, but it seems like something shot for television, and its thesis gets repeated too much.

Quinoa Nov 8, Details Edit. Release date January United States. United States.