Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation (2012), Co-Writer, Co-Director, Co-Producer (with Richard Lowe)
Winner, CINE Golden Eagle, 2012
Emmy nominee, Outstanding Arts & Culture Programming
Emmy Nominee, Outstanding Achievement in a Craft: Writing.
Official Selection, Urbanworld Film Festival
A feature-length documentary about the ascent of hip hop during the controversial crack era of 1986-1992, as told from the point of view of four individuals who at one time were all teenaged crack dealers in inner city neighborhoods—Snoop Dog and B-Real in Los Angeles, and RZA and Raekwon in New York—who all escaped the violence and madness of the crack trade to become seminal hip hop artists, and who documented the crack phenomenon more truthfully in their work than the American mass media. The film also fully explores the political, sociological, and racial dimensions of the story. Narrated by Ice-T, who also served as Executive Producer, Planet Rock marked the first production of Prodigious Media, which I formed with Richard Lowe.
“What was moving about the documentary was the ability of the filmmakers to push the envelope... But the most memorable take away was hearing personally from the men and women whose lives were affected by crack, and those stories of hip-hop saving young black males from what could have been a life that only leads to incarceration or death....”
“The film is impossibly thorough…visceral and severe, going far beyond the places where music and drugs collide.”
““A ground-breaking film...”
