"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, 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

"Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is a visually interesting and sociologically important examination of the gendered performance of black masculinity in hip-hop culture. ...A fast-paced, theoretically-conscious analysis of the socially significant issues of gender and race identities as performance."
- Susan M. Alexander | Teaching Sociology

"Byron Hurt's documentary is one of the most useful tools I've come across for deconstructing "masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today's hip-hop culture." Instead of taking the traditional route of blaming a vaguely defined and erroneously homogeneous hip-hop culture for women's degradation, Hurt focuses the discussion squarely on the individual men who participate in creating a limited conception of black masculinity that limits both men and women. He does so by featuring interviews with men and women who create and consume in hip-hop in various capacities, and puts the responsibility on men for developing solutions to eradicate violence."
- Mandy Van Deven | Co-author of Hey, Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets

"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

Press Reviews

HIP-HOP'S EASY SCAPEGOATS
The Nation | Dave Zirin & Jeff Chang | May 8, 2007

U.S. HIP-HOP FILM SPARKS DEBATE ON MASCULINITY
Reuters | Matthew Bigg | February 20, 2007

HE LOVES RAP BUT NOT THE GANGSTA MESSAGE
Current | Jeremy Egner | December 18. 2006

WAKE UP, MR. LISTENER
NewEnglandfilm.com | Erin Trahan | February 2006

DIRECTOR RIPS HIP-HOP SEXISM, HOMOPHOBIA IN NEW DOCUMENTARY
MTV.com | Benjamin Wagner | January 24, 2006