Multimedia
Review
Freestyle: The Art
of Rhyme. Henry Alex Rubin, producer; DJ organic, director. 2005.
Palm Pictures DVD (75 minutes; Picture format 4:3; sound: Dolby Digital
5.1; Region 1).
If there are natural laws governing the evolution of popular music, one
of them must be this: far-reaching commercial success in a given genre
leads to the proliferation of subgenres and local scenes that define themselves
in opposition to the mainstream. Nowhere does this principle seem more
clearly manifest than in contemporary "underground" hip-hop's oppositional
stance vis--vis "commercial" rap music. Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme,
a documentary by Los AngelesŪ based filmmaker Kevin Fitzgerald (a.k.a.
DJ Organic), sets out to capture the spirit of underground hip-hop by
zeroing in on one of its key practices: improvised rap.
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