Hip-Hop Festival

Philadelphia Weekly
October 1, 2003

Editor's Picks
Hip-Hop Film Festival

Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme, Fri., Oct. 3, 9:30pm and Sat., Oct. 4, 7pm. Lu La de Musica--Def Jux, Fri., Oct. 3, 7pm. Festival runs Fri., Oct. 3-Thurs., Oct. 9. Roxy Theater, 2023 Sansom St. 215.923.6699. www.hiphopfilmfestival.com

Grab your Kangol, lace up your Adidas and shake your booty on down to the Roxy Theater this week for the Philadelphia installment of the Hip-Hop Film Festival. Consisting of 13 films screened over the course of seven days, the festival serves as a visual crash course in hip-hop's recent social consciousness revival.

The two standout flicks on the slate are Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme and Lu La de Musica--Def Jux.

Freestyle is a documentary that took more than seven years to make and features an all-star cast of DJs and MCs (including hometown heroes Black Thought and ?uestlove) like legends Kool Herc, Mos Def and the cats from Jurassic 5. The film documents the art of blaze battles in which MCs go toe-to-toe in improvised lyrical warfare, playing the dozens and spitting rhymes off the top of their domes.

Lu La de Musica is an impressively polished Dutch-produced study of the meteoric rise of the Definitive Jux label, which boasts such artists as Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox and DJ du jour RJD2. The Def Jux phenomenon has been taking the underground hip-hop scene by storm over the last three years, and Musica offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the everyday lives of individuals in a collective that's taking no prisoners in its bid to alter the course of hip-hop as an art form. (Joshua Valocchi)