Hip-hop beyond beats and rhymes

Summary: "An offical selecting of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes, provides a riveting examination of the representations of manhood in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former college quarterback, gender violence prevention educator and long time hip-hop fan, pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for too often perpetuating destructive, deeply conservative styles of manhood that glamorize sexism, violence and homophobia. Taking his camera from the street to the recording studio to the corridors of industry power, Hurt elicits fascinating insights into hip-hop masculinity from ordinary kids, aspiring rappers, music mogul Russell Simmons, rap stars Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss and Busta Rhymes, and prominent cultural critics such as Michael Eric Dyson, Kevin Powell and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. The film is at once gripping and educational in its fearless, unflinching engagement with issues of race, gender violence and the corporate exploitation of youth culture."--Container.