The Objectively Correct List of the Greatest and Worstest Independent Rap Films Ever

With Straight Outta Compton debuting in first place with $60.2 million in its first week of release, Empire blowing TV ratings out of the water, and Dope doing exceptionally strong business on word-of-mouth, it seems like 2015 is under a veritable rap entertainment renaissance. The culture portrayed in hip-hop has been a part of cinema for years, whether it was baked into the core of the script like with Wild Style and Spike Lee’s early movies, or just used as a soundtrack in the Step Up saga. But in order to move forward, we must also look back, which is why I opted to review as much rap cinema as I could get my hands on. There are a few caveats: Obviously, reviewing EVERY movie starring a rapper would be too Herculean a task for one man (plus I really didn’t want to watch Are We Done Yet?), so I’m going to stick to a historical overview of rap cinema, focusing as much on fully independent productions as possible.

Movies like Boyz N The Hood, Menace 2 Society, or even Friday—while excellent—are ineligible because they ultimately got wide releases and critical reverence. The movies I’m focusing on are the dregs, the gas station DVD rentals, the real nitty gritty. Very few of these movies received any theatrical release, some are impossible to find legally. Most of them aren’t really Oscar contenders, but they do speak to a bygone era where young people had enough disposable income to finance an entire cottage industry of independent exploitation movies, largely black-owned and produced without any major studios. Come with me as we unpack these, decade by decade.

Welcome to the primordial ooze from which rap cinema crawled out of! While there weren’t many releases during this period since rap was about five years old, what came out set the tone and landscape for rap movie DNA. These elements include weird, static comedy, underdog street hustlers working for a better life, and a criminal undertone and a distrust of ‘The Man’, whomever they may be.

A bit of a cheat since this is largely a dramatization of the far superior documentary

Style Wars

and because it only features rappers performing music, it still gets a pass because the eighties didn’t have a lot to offer. Taking cues from graffiti and breaking culture,

Beat Street

has aged charmingly well despite rough edges and basically being a tween movie starring Rae Dawn Chong. The performances by early, early rappers like Doug E Fresh, The Furious Five and the Treacherous Three are all electric, plus you just can’t beat that pre-Giuliani New York grime!

The grandfather of rap cinema.

Krush Groove

is essentially the fictional retelling of

Def Jam Records

(renamed Krush Groove records). Blaire Underwood sits in for Russell Simmons while Rick Rubin effectively plays himself. Run DMC, Sheila E, The Fat Boys, New Edition and Kurtis Blow make appearances and have extended musical sequences, all of which are great. The movie itself is kind of a mess. The plot is sort of a love triangle story between Russell, Run and Sheila E, sort of the origin story for The Fat Boys (named as such because they are fat, and also boys), and a weak ‘oh no we borrowed money from bad people!’ plotline pulls it all together. Look out for a very young Chris Rock in an uncredited role.

After

Krush Groove

set up what I have now deemed The Def Jam Cinematic Universe (or DJCU) it only made sense that the breakout stars The Fat Boys would move onto their own film. This movie is straight up bad though. It’s a very typical slobs-vs-snobs comedy that sees the boys playing slacker orderlies who relocate to Florida and teach old rich white people how to have fun. The movie is truly notable for how much weight The Fat Boys gained in only two years.

The final film in the DJCU is also the most interesting. Starring Run DMC, it was written and directed by Rick Rubin, who also stars as the main antagonist. It opens with DMC being released from jail in a pretty impressive one-take POV shot, following a bizarre car ride where Run talks about a strange sexual dream and only gets weirder and more lucid. It’s the more subdued scenes that make this movie really worth watching: The Beastie Boys appear quite a bit, although in 2015 it does feel odd seeing all the members—dead and alive—of

Run DMC and Beastie Boys

sitting around a table, goofing around. While there are some extremely icky racial politics on display (Rubin is a little too comfortable dropping N-bombs), it’s a very interesting snapshot at a turning point in rap. In fact, a big plot point is a murder cover-up involving something that would be indelibly linked to rap forever—crack cocaine.

Tougher Than Leather

has never been released on DVD and is only legally available in out-of-print VHS. Hint Hint.

The 90s were an interesting era for this particular type of film. It was just before the ubiquity of DVD, and it was also during a real transitional period. Movies like House Party, Higher Learning, Do The Right Thing, New Jack City, CB4, House Party 3, and many more garnered critical acclaim (in some cases), box office receipts (more importantly video rental receipts), and general mainstream clout with the movie-watching public. TV was also on fire, with A Different World, The Jamie Foxx Show, Martin, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, the entire WB network, and, of course, UPN’s Homeboys In Outer Space. I’d give my firstborn for a Homeboys In Outer Space reboot. Even so, Master P, ahead of his time as ever, founded No Limit Films and practically owned the 90s.

What is there to be said about I’m Bout It that hasn’t already said? Prince Paul has officially cited it as the inspiration for A Prince Among Thieves and Dame Dash unofficially looked at it and thought ‘Hey, we could do that.’ Billed as a comedy/drama, there is far more comedy than drama in Master P’s first film and the first from No Limit Films. Based on his real experiences what it lacks in any and all technical skill it makes up for with authenticity. It’s cheap and stupid, but this is really the movie that set off the direct-to-video rapsploitation boom and proved there was a market.

Clocking in at a lean 35 minutes, Da Game Of Life is Snoop Dogg’s introduction to the list, but not his last appearance by a long shot. Ostensibly this ‘movie’ existed to show the world that Snoop was now a No Limit soldier and that his first album on No Limit, Da Game Is To Be Sold Not To Be Told, was coming out. It tells a mostly meandering tale of Snoop as the creatively named Smooth. He’s a prolific gambler, but believe me, the local gambling mafia is not happy when Smooth decides he wants to open a casino. Snoop gets shot and learns a valuable lesson and the credits have about four music videos. The Pen & Pixel artwork on the aforementioned album holds up a lot better.

Master P plays Black while AJ Johnson plays Blue (Get it? Black & Blue), two small-time criminals who re-sell a truck of stolen cellphones to the community. This makes them local heroes, but not especially popular with local thugs and the Feds. Master P makes a relatively inoffensive lead, and the California locales are a nice change-up from the dreary NYC locations of previous movies on this list. It meanders in parts, but it is actually pretty funny and works as a kind of bizzaro Friday, with Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister playing another criminal and Ice Cube showing up at the end in a cameo.

Belly

still fucking rules. The opening scene, cut to an acapella of Soul II Soul’s “Back To Life,” is arguably one of the best intros of all time. Directed by Hype Williams (still his only film) and starring Nas, DMX, T-Boz (of TLC), and Method Man this is still the gold standard and a pleasure to watch, even 17 years after release.

No Limit Films went straight into Steven Seagal territory with these films, which is a goal that is mostly achieved and is actually better than most of Seagal’s movies at the time. Lumped together because they both co-star Gary Busey for some reason (I have a hunch Master P tricked him into thinking he was in two movies, but that is not confirmed), these are pure garbage 90s action movies with a little bit of rap flavoring added. The only thing you really need to know about

No Tomorrow

is that Master P plays a combination arms dealer/rap mogul and he pulls out a combination rocket launcher/flame thrower in the first five minutes. Hot Boyz marks the second appearance of Snoop Dogg in a No Limit film and stars Silkk The Shocker as a youth pushed to the edge by corrupt cops. What these movies lack in coherence they make up for with lots of explosions and absurd gun violence.

Finally. This is where rap cinema truly took the training wheels off and we saw Three Six Mafia and Eminem winning Oscars (but not for the movies below). This era also introduced rampant corporate synergy pioneered by No Limit (‘what if State Property were a group, an album, two movies AND a clothing line?’), and produced an unparalleled amount of content. And while movies like Hustle and Flow, 8 Mile, and the impressively-daunting amount of action movies 50 Cent was allowed to star in were cleaning up in the box office, it arguably opened up more room for the low-budget pulp features that we love so much. Plus it launched the film career of Cam’ron, the DeNiro of rapsploitation.

No Limit Films’ attempt at making a

serious prison drama

is a mild success, but its unwillingness to jump into silliness ultimately hurts it. It’s just not quite bad enough to be funny and not quite good enough to be worth watching. It does have the distinction of being one of the few rap movies that acknowledge the existence of swimming, a point they directly reference as soon as our three lead characters get to prison. The plot is about three friends who find themselves wrongly accused of murder and in prison. I think they’re supposed to be high school students, but they all look 40 and, in a scene that seemingly exists solely to not give any indication of their age, sing along to Chaka Khan & Rufus’ "Tell Me Something Good." Master P shows up about 40 minutes in as Clean Up, a prisoner with some clout, but this seems to exist in those movie prisons where people can just walk about and do whatever, whenever they want. There’s the usual threat of rape and racial tension, but it’s all done much better in other movies

Would you expect anything less from horrorcore pioneer Brotha Lynch Hung than an insane horror/comedy involving witches and cannibalism? It looks like it was shot on a Handi-Cam, the audio is near-unlistenable, and all the jokes are shot in super-wide angle, for maximum… well not impact, but awkwardness for sure. The plot has a neighborhood witch casting a spell on Brotha Lynch Hung that turns him into a cannibal (I think?). The movie ends with the witch framing the cop who was investigating the cannibalistic murders, and Brotha drops possibly my favorite line in any of these movies, ‘I gotta go kill me a witch.’ It’s unwatchable in the best way.

While only tangentially involving the rappers it so proudly boasts on its cover (Eminem! Ja Rule! Mobb Deep! Vitamin C?)

Da Hip Hop Witch

is the classic rapsloitation bait and switch. While on paper the idea of blending a Blair Witch’style proto-found footage movie and rap culture is inventive AND allows them to artistically explain the shoddy production values, in practice it is a mess. The bare-bones story centers around five white characters from Salem who travel to New York City to track down a witch who targets up-and-coming rappers and blackmail a sleazy record executive. While the whole thing is supposed to be ‘found footage’ it is never clear who is filming whom or for what purposes. Sometimes it cuts to footage clearly shot backstage at concerts where the celebrity rappers improv their experiences with the witch, many of which barely make sense even in the context of a low budget horror comedy. Only for Eminem die-hards, and even then just watch

this supercut

of his entire performance.

Given three days to pay their rent or be evicted, Dr. Dre gets a job as the boss of a car wash where his roommate Snoop Dogg works (they have character names, but c’mon). The newfound responsibility quickly goes to his head, as he has the nerve to try and fire Snoop for stealing supplies while having sex in the supply closet (the scene has a disturbing moment where Dre appears so turned on by Snoop having sex he almost starts masturbating). It drives a stake through their carefree lifestyle, but everything works out in the end. Eminem makes his big-screen debut as a disgruntled ex-employee, months before 8 Mile. This movie is ONLY notable for having “

Bad Intentions

” on the soundtrack, which we were all sure was going to be on Detox (to be so young).

While borderline unwatchable as an actual movie, if you’re even a casual Three Six Mafia fan the novelty of seeing all of Hypnotize Minds earnestly stumbling their way through a morality tale is worth the price of admission (which is $0, because while there is no trailer you can really, really easily find the whole thing on YouTube). Despite its obvious flaws Choices manages to squeeze out some genuine charm, and seeing Juicy J act is really special.

Produced for MTV, directed by Robert Townsend, and starring freaking

Beyoncé in her film debut

,

Carmen

is a perfect snapshot of 2001. It also marks the first appearance of Mekhi Phifer on this list.

Carmen

is based on the 1943 Broadway musical Carmen Jones, which was in turn based on the 1875 opera Carmen. Mos Def, Jermaine Dupri, Bow Wow, Rah Digga (does anything say 2001 more than Rah Digga?), Da Brat, and Wyclef all make appearances and generally don’t embarrass themselves. P.S. Beyoncé dies.

Treach, of

Naughty By Nature

, stars in this surprisingly enjoyable movie as a hitman who has to kill—wait for it—his girlfriend! Probably the most clever of any movie featured here, the dialogue is actually great, though my mind might be permanently damaged from watching all of these movies. While it’s ultimately a sub-Tarantino knockoff, it has a big sense of humor about what kind of movie it is and Treach makes for a fairly compelling lead, even if he looks about 5 foot 2 (according to Google he’s 5 foot 8). They even make fun of holding your gun sideways.

In his first movie ever, Cam’ron murks out Mekhi Phifer. Produced by Roc-A-Fella films and set in Harlem just before the crack epidemic of the 80s,

Paid In Full

is another solid New York crime movie that works as a companion piece to Belly. One of the most memorable scenes in a movie full of them is when Cam’s character Rico, and I quote, “

Hit her with the Dougie shit.

”

The second Roc-A-Fella films release on the list.

Starring Kevin Hart

, noted thespian Beanie Sigel, and Stacey Dash this is actually one of the most enjoyable movies on the list. Kevin Hart has truly always been a star, and they clearly let him adlib and have fun with his first starring role. Hart plays the leader of three friends who decide to rob mansions in upstate NY in broad daylight. Somehow, this plan not only works, it works beyond their wildest dreams. There are some truly bizarre fourth-wall breaking jokes featuring Damon Dash (who also co-directed) as himself—except he has inexplicably decided to keep robbing houses despite being portrayed as a successful rap mogul. Oh, they also rob

Jay-Z’s house

in one scene. Jay also plays himself (and got top billing over Hart, despite having no dialogue).

I’ve lumped these together because the first 20 minutes of

State Property 2

is a direct re-telling of everything that happened in the first

State Property

, so you really get your money’s worth with the sequel. Beanie Sigel plays ‘Beans’, locked up as ‘State Property’ (get it?) from the events of the first movie, who has to form an uneasy alliance with Miami drug dealer El Pollo Loco (NORE) as they try to stop the ‘bad drug dealer’ Dame (Damon Dash). The plot is simultaneously over-complicated and brick-stupid, but it’s worth watching for the cameos (Kanye West! Mariah Carey!) and the fact that it’s the last appearance of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, whom the movie is dedicated to.

Including this movie is obviously a bit of a cheat, as it was clearly given a theatrical release and a budget that might be the combined budgets of every other movie on this list. But it’s worth including in the conversation for a few reasons: First, it is unabashedly rapsploitation through and through, and, second, it shows that even with 40 million dollars, Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan, and a script from Terence Winter (who wrote

The Wolf Of Wall Street

and about 20 Sopranos episodes) you can still make a pile of garbage.

50 Cent

mumbles his way through his own origin story, laughably trying to pass as a teenager in the first half. The movie tries so hard to be taken seriously that by the time you get to the hospital scene where 50 is clearly wearing a fake mustache, you just have to sit back and laugh. It essentially ends with 50 saving the rec center, but the nude, prison fight scene with Terrence Howard about halfway through is really this movie’s saving grace.

Snoop returns to the list with a bang and a new production company, Snoopadelic Films. Snoop plays a lowly cashier at a grocery store who dreams big, so when a local pimp tells him he has what it takes, truly he has no choice but to sell his girlfriend’s body. It’s a tale as old as time. The movie is padded out with music video sequences that double as fantasies, which is either the cheapest way to pad out a movie or the most expensive way to add a movie around music videos—either way it’s ineffective. The pimp politics were dated at the time this came out and are downright uncomfortable to watch in 2015. There are lots of scenes where clearly real pimps are telling clearly real pimp stories, most of which involve beating women and are as charming as they sound. There’s also a scene with a literal hooker boot camp that is played completely straight.

As far as movies made for $27k that exist almost solely to sell albums of the same name,

Killa Season

has the important distinction of being number one with many, many bullets. The Diplomats’ only film (and possibly the last time many of them got along even a little),

Killa Season

stars Cam’ron, Juelz Santana, Hell Rell and for some reason Funkmaster Flex. Despite its glaring technical difficulties this is still a must-watch for anyone who’s made it this far in the article. Cam convincing plays himself about 12 times better than 50 Cent.

Sticky Fingaz had a dream

. That dream was to tell a compelling, heart-wrenching story through one long rap song. While Carmen was a cute MTV story, Sticky clearly wanted to do something bigger and bolder. He comes very close with

A Day In The Life

, but its biggest problem is also its only reason for existing—it’s a 90-minute rap song that also has to double as movie exposition. Mekhi Phifer makes his final appearance on this list (fitting that it’s another hip hopera) and it pains me to say this movie isn’t very good because it’s just so fascinating. Worth checking out for the morbidly curious but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I never thought I’d say these words, but despite featuring Mystikal as an anthropomorphic, CGI blunt

Mac & Devin

is one of the worst movies ever, let alone on this list. Wiz Khalifa plays Devin, a geek who doesn’t have tattoos and Snoop Dogg plays Mac, who is allowed to stay in high school despite it being his 15th year. Mac introduces Devin to weed, Devin gets tattooed, loses his virginity in a strip club, invents a new kind of electricity that runs on weed, and Andy Milonakis smokes a girl’s fart. Oh, and the principal’s last name is “

Skinflute

.” I have a feeling that much like the horrible weed movies I watched as a teenager this may have a special place in certain millennial hearts, but it is truly a pile of shit. One stray observation is during one of the movie’s many, many non-sequiturs (for a 75 minute movie including credits there is a lot of padding) a different anthropomorphic weed character (this time a guy in a weed suit) explains that Osama Bin Laden was caught because he was high on weed, which sends mixed messages at best.

------

I did my best to cast a wide net, but many of these are just lost to time, or at least streaming services. Some are so lost I can’t find any record of them being available for sale EVER, like The Neptunes’ Dude, We’re Going To Rio, which is my The Day The Clown Cried. What do these movies say about rap, about culture, about filmmaking? Not much. Many of these movies only existed as a cheap cash-in product, but despite those less-than-artistic beginnings, they do work as cultural snapshots. More importantly, these movies were largely all-black independent productions and are worth celebrating as such. Hopefully, we haven’t seen the last of this genre. I want a Rich Gang road trip comedy, a Dej Loaf period piece, and maybe a Nutty Professor-style movie where Drake plays all five leads. It looks like Gucci Mane has us covered, though. See you opening night.

Adam Jackson watched all of these movies in one sitting. Follow him on Twitter.