Every so often, TV networks- often fishing for new ideas- decide to look at “current social problems” and commission an “investigative” documentary on the subject. Some of them, through piercing wit (MTV’s “Everybody’s (Not) Doin’ It”, about the abstinence-only education programs) or intense scrutiny (ABC’s documentary on Jesus several years ago) are actually inspired and insightful, leaving an impact with its audience and raising the kind of debate that will have the audience talking about them and debating their merits for days. Others- such as the Michael Moore film documentaries- are just simply enjoyable even if they are factually dubious. Then there are others, such as “Hip-Hop Justice” that are neither enjoyable or insightful, being the kind of “matter-of-fact posturing” type of documentaries where only the basic questions are answered- if they even are addressed adequately or even at all- and with more time spent segueing in and out of commercials than on providing actual content. In “Hip-Hop Justice”, about perceived connection rap has with crime, for every new insight or answer it may draw, there are about three new questions that come up, and they’re of the “why was that important” or “how do the pieces fit together” kind, not of the debating kind like they’re supposed to.

The documentary haphazardly starts with the New York underground rap scene that the narrator says started in the late 1970s. Already from the start the documentary is faced with problems- first of all, the scene started in the early 1970s not the late 1970s, and the origins of rap music- often held to be the Jamaican tradition of “toasting” (similar to the so-called “rap-battles”)- are ignored entirely, as is the appearance of the first rap hit, the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979). These may sound like nothing more than semantics, because, as the narrator says, the real beginnings of the so-called “gangsta rap”- the main topic of discussion for the documentary- were with NWA, Ice-T and Public Enemy who appeared in the early 1990s, but, like most cookie-cutter documentaries, it assumes that the phenomenon in question only began when it really first appeared, failing to provide any real insight. For example, it talks of Ice-T’s song “Cop Killer” and the controversy that surrounded it, and while it does reveal that Ice-T wrote the song as a protest song, it does not reveal Ice-T’s own inspiration for the song, or even any reason for NWA and Public Enemy to even become popular at all. Despite a few minor references to “hard neighbourhoods”, one gets the sense while watching “Hip-Hop Justice” that something like NWA just appeared out of the blue and became popular, ignoring why it was that NWA took off while other groups- who may have even spouted a similar message- did not. To the documentary’s credit, their take on Run DMC, who said that they dressed like the “hood” because they wanted to be proof that even the poor can succeed, does provide a little bit about the background behind the eventual rise of “socially conscious” rappers like Public Enemy, but the matter-of-fact style of the documentary fails to really connect the entities, leaving the viewer hanging.

The documentary picks up steam as soon as it enters the period of Tupac Shakur. On Shakur the documentary gets particularly insightful, noting the time when Shakur essentially walked away from a shootout with two off-duty police officers without even as much as a slap on the wrist. “He became a folk legend,” said the documentary, providing the possible (though never mentioned) inspiration for many future rappers, who now knew that the “thug lifestyle” could actually be one that could be lived. It also provided an insight into the possibilities of the “police surveillance” of rappers may have began, with the appearance of a government agent in Shakur’s entourage. What it failed to do was to fit Shakur into a greater context, failing to mention if Shakur was a unique individual when it became to targeting or if the police had actually begun to target other rappers as well as Shakur (a possibility since Snoop Dogg, nee Snoop Doggy Dogg, was also indicted and acquitted of murder charges during Shakur’s chart life). It also failed to adequately address Shakur’s feud with The Notorious B.I.G., long held to be the climax of the gangsta rap generation, or even the role of other rappers- such as Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre- had in popularizing gangsta rap as a culture. It simply ended with Shakur’s death and clumsily concluded it with the words “the shooter was never found”, not even once addressing the alleged conspiracy concerning the Los Angeles Police Department’s investigation of the case.

After Shakur, the focus of the documentary shifts to Master P’s brother, Corey Miller (AKA C-Murder) and his legal woes, as well as a Miami Herald investigation that revealed that the Miami Police Department was secretly spying on rappers. To its credit, the documentary actually shines here, as its insights are rather revealing. For example, they trot out evidence of a police record book on virtually every rapper in existence, containing things even as mundane as where they park their cars, as well as the suppression of evidence that led to Miller’s murder conviction in 2002. They even counterbalance it with interviews with police officers who confirm rapper spying existed, with most of them admitting that it is difficult keeping their “preventative detective work” from becoming too invasive. However, having said that, it still fails to address things like who exactly Corey Miller was and just why he wrote the lyrics that he did, or even why police officers agreed to spy projects in the first place. It does, admittedly, handle the immediate issues well, but it fails to provide much background to the issues specifically, much like the documentary had before.

In short, “Hip-Hop Justice” is a simple, derivative documentary that simply states that things happen but rarely addresses why they happen, leaving open the kind of questions that leave the audience confused and not inspired to debate its merits or even do something about the problem. Admittedly, the issue is probably far too complex to fit into the one-hour block it was given on TV, but the cursory manner in which the issue is raised leaves too much to be desired. Also, what it does omit is rather glaring- it does not once address the “current” state of gangsta rap through the “new blood” of Eminem and 50 Cent, and, while it talks about “posses” and “feuds” it fails to delve into the reasoning behind their existence, and fails to really get into the lives of rappers as a whole. It also fails to really address the issue of rappers in the larger context of racial profiling and of discrimination against minorities as a whole, leaving the audience wondering if the rappers’ problem is really isolated or part of a much larger context. It will talk big about how “most gangsta rappers are not gangsters” and why “street cred” is needed to be a successful rapper, but it never qualifies those statements, choosing to simply state “that’s the way it is” and leaving it for us to decide their importance. Not once does the audience ever feel like they understand what it is exactly that the documentary is trying to prove or even what kind of point it wants to project, treating rappers as interchangeable figures who have all these lyrics without any real reasoning behind those lyrics or their image as a whole. It never does what it sets out to do- find the root of the rap/crime problem- and that, ultimately is what makes it fail. It really is a shame- for a project with a topic that sorely needed to be addressed and a documentary that had so much potential it left far too much to be desired. To those who may not have any clue at all about hip-hop culture, it may provide some insight, but for those looking for answers to rap’s crime woes, “Hip-Hop Justice” won’t even get close to answering them. For people really looking to examine rap’s cultural ills, you are better off reading a book or visiting a Web Site, because this documentary will just waste your time.

                                                                                -DG

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