Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre's rap column cover songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.
Last week, we got the trailer for Piece by piece, a quasi-documentary that tells the story of Pharrell Williams' life in the form of a… Lego movie. Correctly. The Lego Group follows The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part with a cute hagiographic piece. First, it's being marketed as “an experience that captures the magic and brilliance of Pharrell Williams' creative genius, one Lego brick at a time,” which just means that Pharrell's story will be sterile and hollow. Perhaps worse, Lego is clearly using hip-hop as a way to keep their brand cool. In the trailer, we see Lego depictions of Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes and more, all figurines that I wouldn't be surprised to see hitting toy store shelves by the film's fall release date. What else would be the point? Because we know for sure that Lego isn't suddenly interested in preserving hip-hop stories. And, if it is, I'll be patiently waiting to buy a ticket for Rio Da Yung LEG-OG in IMAX.
The same day I saw it Piece by piece trailer, I watched Dream Hampton's exciting new documentary It was all a dream. It struck a chord with me. The Detroit writer, critic and filmmaker's black feminist perspective, and skepticism of rap's point of view, have been shaking up hip-hop since '91, when RESPECT's outraged article about the violent assault of Dr. Dre to the TV host. Dee Barnes, was featured in an issue of The source. Her long-standing honesty and willingness to confront the genre's misogyny has often unfairly placed her at odds with the music for which she has a complicated love. It was all a dream, which has been screened twice as part of the Tribeca Festival and screens once more on Saturday, June 15, at Village East by Angelika, speaks to contradictions, albeit more subtly than I ever expected from the dream. Check out her impressive work, from her scathing review of Maxwell's Embryo in the Village Voice (she later apologized, but I still love her) in her fiery odes to Tupac to be the showrunner of Lifetime's apocalypse R. Kelly survivesshe was rarely subtle.
Consisting entirely of archival video footage recorded from 1993 to 1995 and narrated using pieces he wrote during that decade, It was all a dream it's an intimate look at an era in hip-hop when the East Coast-West Coast rivalry was in its early days, gangsta rap had challenged the very essence of the genre, and the commercialization of rap was on the rise. It's all told through the eyes of a twenty-something dreamer as he goes from studio sessions to backseat car rides with some of the era's defining rappers: Dre and Snoop, Mobb Deep, Lil' Kim, Method Man, Diddy and Biggie. The juiciest footage is of Biggie, with whom he had a close relationship, so we can see him joking and relaxing, a side of him that has been lost with his mythology.
