The Furious Force of Rhymes

This is the story of hip-hop as protest music - on a global scale. Since its beginnings in the New York ghettos of the 1970s, groups all over the world who want to express dissatisfaction about their lowly social position have staked a claim on rap culture. Director Joshua Atesh Litle captures five subcultures in this sumptuously filmed and smoothly edited documentary, showing us along the way how rap has developed into a universal language of the oppressed. In the United States, we take a dip into the source of hip-hop. In France, migrants living in the use rap as their medium of protest. In Berlin, neo-Nazis make off with black culture, while in Israel and Palestine, rappers convey the directly opposing ideologies of Zionism and anti-Zionism in the same rap terminology. And in Senegal, Atesh Litle concludes the circle with a look at Africa, the ultimate source of hip-hop. Trendsetters from each scene get the chance to speak, but the main thing is the music. Their flowing rhymes bind the film together in sequences that are more like music videos.