Media Education Foundation: Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes


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Reviews and Comments

"I am certain [Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes] will only add to the national and international dialogues around hip-hop culture, and its tremendous effect on our era."
-- Kevin Powell, activist, hip-hop journalist, author

"Byron Hurt has a sophisticated and complex framing of the issues and is poised, with Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes to make a critical and long needed intervention on these very important facets of American youth music and culture."
-- Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Associate Professor of History and American Studies, New York University

"Both honors rap for its courage, as well as holding the producers and creators responsible for disseminating what are often degrading messages."
-- Gail Dines, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, Wheelock College

"This film poses fundamental questions about how Hip-Hop culture represents and expresses basic attitudes in our society about love, violence, and compassion."
-- Orlando Bagwell, actor

"Gives hip-hop an unrelenting, hard stare, questioning its stance on misogyny, hypersexuality, materialism, homophobia, homoeroticism, hypocrisy and the resultant stereotype perpetuation."
-- Grayson Curran, The Independent Weekly

"A tough-minded, erudite dissection of misogyny and homophobia in hip-hop - in the tradition of Supersize Me - this is the one that has people buzzing, 'It should be taught in high schools!'"
-- Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly

"Invaluable for understanding not only one aspect of African American culture but how it relates to the rest of American culture as well."
-- San Francisco Chronicle

"If politics has Michael Moore, then Hip-Hop--excuse me, commercial rap--has Byron Hurt. In the same manner that Moore stuck tough questions to the guts of politicians and company executives, Hurt hit up established and aspiring rappers, television and record label executives and even Russell Simmons."
-- AllHipHop.com

"Free-form, first-person docu is an ambitious collage of revealing interviews and pop-culture overviews, employed to illustrate Hurt's meditation on the uglier aspects of hip-hop culture."
-- Variety

"Captivating"
-- Boston Globe

"Hard-hitting"
-- Reuters

"A fascinating subject rarely explored in the depth this short documentary submerges in."
-- Michael Ferraro, Film Threat

"Byron Hurt's ground-breaking documentary is the talk of the Hip-Hop circuit and those in the know."
-- National Black Programming Consortium

"Provocative and edgy"
-- South Bend Tribune

"Incisive, informative and entertaining. . .Though the film bears a viewer discretion warning, it is exactly the kind of program that should be watched by teens who embrace hip-hop music without thinking of the stereotypes it perpetuates and the thug lifestyle it endorses."
-- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A profound analysis and self-criticism by a member of the Hip-Hop Generation."
-- Esther Iverem, SeeingBlack.com

"Filmmaker Byron Hurt takes the hip-hop industry--and audience--to task in his new documentary."
-- TimeOut Chicago

"A groundbreaking montage that questions masculinity, homophobia and misogyny in the hip-hop industry for those who live and breathe the culture."
-- Philadelphia Weekly

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes
(2006)

AS SEEN ON PBS

*Please be advised that the PBS broadcast was edited for profanity, nudity, and sexual imagery; DVDs for purchase contain only the full, unedited version of the film.

View the trailer for this film on You Tube! Click Here

In this section:
Summary
Logistical Information
Biographical Summary
Reviews and Comments
Screenings and Festivals
Articles

Summary:

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes provides a riveting examination of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a "loving critique" of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood. The documentary features revealing interviews about masculinity and sexism with rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, and cultural commentators such as Michael Eric Dyson and Beverly Guy-Shetfall. Critically acclaimed for its fearless engagement with issues of race, gender violence, and the corporate exploitation of youth culture.

Logistical Information:

Director and co-producer: Byron Hurt
Co-producer and editor: Sabrina Schmidt Gordon
Executive producer: Stanley Nelson

Sections: Introduction | Everybody Wants to be Hard | Shut Up and Give Me Your Bone Marrow | Women and Bitches | Bitch Niggaz | Manhood in a Bottle

For more info, visit www.bhurt.com

Biographical Summary:

Central Islip, NY native Byron Hurt is a filmmaker, gender violence prevention worker, and former star college quarterback. He has a diverse background in the media, with work experience in broadcast television, print, public relations, and long-form documentary. He was a production assistant for Stanley Nelson's American Experience PBS documentary, Marcus Garvey: Look For Me in the Whirlwind and is the producer of the "underground classic" award-winning documentary film, I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America. Hurt is also the associate director of Mentors in Violence Prevention-Marine Corps (MVP-MC), the first system-wide gender violence prevention program in the history of the United States military. Hurt has lectured and facilitated workshops at colleges and universities nationwide including the University of Kentucky, Southern Oregon University, Washington State University, UMass-Amherst, St. John's University, Loyola Marymount-Los Angeles, University of North Carolina, and the University of Nebraska.

Screenings and Festivals:

Articles:

>> Use It or Lose It
MediaRights | Shira Golding | July 17, 2007

>> Hip-Hop's E-Z Scapegoats
The Nation | Dave Zirin & Jeff Chang | May 8, 2007

>> U.S. hip-hop film sparks debate on masculinity
Reuters | Matthew Big | February 21, 2007

>> Beyond Beats and Ryhmes Review
AllHipHop.com | Slav Kandyba | February 2007

>> He loves rap but not the gangsta message
Current.org | Jeremy Egner | December 18, 2006

>> Byron Hurt: On Manhood in Hip-Hop
Vibe.com | John Cantwell | June 28, 2006

>> Mos Def, Fat Joe, Jadakiss and Busta Rhymes Go "Beyond Beats and Rhymes"
AllHipHop.com | Remmie Fresh | May 19, 2006

>> Interview with "Beyond Beats & Rhymes" Director Byron Hurt
Rotten Tomatoes | Tim Ryan | February 2, 2006

>> Wake Up Mr. Listener
NewEnglandfilm.com | Erin Trahan | February 2006

>> Hip-Hop Documentary Questions the Future of Music at Sundance
Rotten Tomatoes | Tim Ryan | January 26, 2006

>> Director Rips Hip-Hop Sexism, Homophobia In New Documentary
MTV.com | Benjamin Wagner | January 24, 2006

>> Beyond Beats & Rhymes: Masculinity in Hip-Hop
Wiretap | Suemedha Sood | March 1, 2005

For a complete list of articles, visit www.bhurt.com