The most comprehensive hip-hop documentary to date, Rhyme & Reason is like PBS’ History of Rock & Roll, only not quite as long. Actually, that’s its chief weakness: Trying to squeeze the 20-year history of hip-hop into a two-hour time frame is like trying to fit a late-model Elvis into Kate Moss’ wardrobe ñ there’s just not enough room. That aside, Spirer’s gleefully ambitious feature debut is a wild roller coaster of a ride that touches on virtually every aspect of hip-hop, from the birth of rap music with pioneer rappers like Kurtis Blow and the Sugarhill Gang to the East Coast/West Coast rivalry that sprang up in the mid-Eighties, and from the inner-city, South Bronx origins of hip-hop, not only as a form of music but also as a lifestyle, to the recent murder of Tupac Shakur. Spirer has edited hundreds of hours of interviews into a single cohesive block that works alongside his own rapid-fire editing rhythms. Longtime rap and community educator KRS-ONE, formerly of Boogie Down Productions, is one of the most eloquent of Spirer’s subjects, tracing the history and origins of South Bronx rap from its humble beginnings at street-corner block parties in the late Eighties to the DIY attitude later taken up by Too-Short and others. Not to be outdone, Los Angeleno Ice-T (most famous outside the hip-hop community for his incendiary, controversial “Cop Killer” single of a few years back) chimes in with his take on the genesis of gangsta rap and the West Coast sound. In between, Spirer manages to cram in every possible topic (women in hip-hop, the future of hip-hop, etc.) and, seemingly, every possible hip-hop spokesperson, of whom there are hundreds, among them Grammy winners the Fugees and the Wu-Tang Clan. With this much information packed into such a short time frame (and broken up only by the occasional intertitle), the wealth of material presented in Rhyme & Reason sometimes melts into a bass-driven blur. It’s almost too much of a good thing, leaving your head spinning from sensory overload. Still, better too much than not enough. And, I think, better Spirer than Ken Burns.
This article appears in May 24 • 2002.