May 16, 2005 @ 4:05 am

DVD Review: Freestyle - The Art of Rhyme

by: Kathryn Bodle

As hip hop culture and music moved into the mainstream in the late eighties, many of the criti

This film dives into this offshoot of hip hop culture that comes complete with its own language, rituals, and rites of passage. The narrative of Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme follows the career arc of MC Supernatural, one of the first phenomenons in freestyle rapping. It's these segments of the film that might be labeled as the "real 8 Mile," with its emphasis on the battles between Supernatural and nemesis Craig G, and later Supernatural and fellow master freestyler Juice. The film traces all aspects of these out-and-out wars of words from the initial challenge, to the risks of battle and the humiliation and often career devastation that comes with losing a battle. Finally the climax comes with fight night, documented in gritty 18 mm footage that literally captures the anticipation and furious energy of the battle crowd - giving the film audience an intimate, in-house look. To supplement the storyline of these freestyle competitions, the film traces the history of freestyle rap from its roots in church song-sermons, blues and jazz of artists like John Coltrane, and finally to hip hop's inception in the Bronx in the mid seventies, with striking images of the early years of hip hop, breakdancing, spinning, and freestyling. The highlight of this rare footage comes towards the end of the film with a hand-held recording of the Notorious B.I.G. at seventeen years-old, freestyling for a rowdy group of onlookers on the streets of Brooklyn. The expertise and historical context provided by narrators like The Last Poets and jazz musician and historian Eluard Burt II, put the genre into its context within African American music and American music in general, as an expression of the American experience. The real success of Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme is its ability to captivate the audience with its balance of talking-head information and Cinema Verite illustration of mind-blowing flow not only in the concert venue, but in street ciphers, at home with family and friends, and even alone in the car. Watching these master improvisational lyricists at their more raw and intimate is like watching great athletes mid-game, and immediately becoming the No. 1 impossible talent to want. As with athletes, the film stresses the amount of dedication and training that these artists have put into their craft, most notably in a sequence featuring Supernatural, who maintains that he's intensely studied the dictionary and rhyming dictionaries for the past fifteen years. Each artist, amateur or on the level of featured stars like Jurassic 5 and Mos Def, talks about the art of rhyme with a philosophy and eloquence that too often deemphasized in mainstream hip hop. Portraying hip hop as a ferociously smart, creative, and essential part of American music and culture, Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme is absolutely convincing in putting hip hop and freestyle culture on the highest level of intellectuality and art, giving the genre a credibility that has not been seen since Tricia Rose's ethnography Black Noise. The film emphasizes hip hop's relevance to music in an critical way, without forgetting that its staying power also comes the pain of the African American experience. While popular thought might suggest that this pain transforms to violence, Freestyle focuses on the on the community and healing powers of this hypnotizing marriage of poetry, music, and speech. Watch the trailer: Video: Freestyle - The Art of Rhyme

Article tags: DVD, Review, Freestyle, Art, Rhyme