Word: rap
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Which, of course, is standard fare for the cookie-cutter action movies Hollywood cranks out by the dozen. But I had hoped that a director as noted as John Singleton and an actor with Jackson's talent would produce something more challenging than a cinematic gangsta-rap song. The original Shaft--one of the first black movie heroes to talk back to the Man and get away with it--meant something special to blacks like me who came of age during the '70s. We could use another hero like that now. Instead we got the shaft...
...Federation, now run don't-try-this-at-home ads during their bouts. But to the boys in Sayreville, the warnings seem silly. "I wear kneepads," says Donnie Deleto, 16. "We don't crack light bulbs on each other. We don't use cheese graters. We get a bad rap because idiots do that. We're putting on a show." Just like...
...historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, is an early attempt to combine the outsider rhythms of hip-hop with the conventions of musical theater. Echo Park's story line is slim and simple: Scott Jenkins (Derrik "Nine" Keyes), a young man growing up in the early days of rap, longs to be a deejay but has to persuade his mother Bertha (DK Dyson) to let him follow his dreams. Along the way, the show tries to educate the audience about hip-hop history (rap pioneer Kurtis Blow plays a narrator). Strangely, the rap songs in Echo Park are almost incidental; they...
...culture, of course, isn't just about rap; break dancing is also an important part. And the dancing in Echo Park is spectacular. B-boys in the show spin like records on turntables and twist themselves like laces on Adidas sneakers. Without words, without samples, they capture the raw energy of rap...
...play. At our first session, we spent most of the time telling our life stories and how they had led us to become paragons of selfless giving. Then we let him know just how cool we were. Eventually, I found myself saying things like, "I did some of the rap singing myself in seventh grade. I called myself the Rap King...