Hip-hop is continually changing and evolving. In his new Netflix docuseries Rapture, director and executive producer Sacha Jenkins examines hip-hop as we know it today through the eyes of some of the genres biggest artists. The eight-episode series follows Nas, T.I., 2 Chainz, Rapsody, Logic, G-Eazy, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and Dave East -- lyricists with different legacies and at various stages of their careers. In his episode, Jenkins follows Illmatic legend Nas and his protégée Dave East. Fifteen years apart in age and from different boroughs in New York City, the two men speak about their respective come-ups and all they’ve encountered to get where they are today. Ahead of Rapture’s Netflix debut, Jenkins and I spoke about the series, how technology has transformed the music industry, and why artists must speak for themselves.
For Jenkins, Rapture was about looking at hip-hop from a new perspective. "I was a journalist writing about hip-hop for many years," he explained. "To see it first hand and to have the kind of intimate access that we had, I knew that was something that hip-hop could use right now. I know that hip-hop is the most streamed, most popular form of music in the world, and it's very easy for people to be into hip-hop just on the strength of the way it sounds, (and) the way it feels. But, I know as a native that there are so many things that get lost in translation, and I felt that a series like (Rapture) would give people a real window and therefore a deeper understanding of what hip-hop really means, (and) where it comes from."
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If you exist outside of the Greek world, and certainly if you attended a predominantly white university as a student of color, Greek life swirls around you.
Fraternities and sororities at historically Black colleges and universes have had a significant impact not just on the students who are a part of them but on the Black community as a whole. In films like “Drumline” and “Stomp the Yard,” which are set on HBCU campuses, we often get a small glimpse into the sacred world of pledging, the focus of these film shining a light on other aspects of college life. Perhaps not since Spike Lee’s 1988 film “School Daze” has there been such a major focus on pledging Black frats and sororities and the hazing that often comes along with that.
Growing up, prison seemed like an abstract concept to me, one reserved for “Law & Order” episodes and select family members who would be absent every other Christmas or Thanksgiving holiday. It wasn’t until I arrived in college in a class on Black Urban Studies, that I was educated about the mass incarceration that occurs in this country. I watched the 1998 documentary “The Farm: Angola, USA,” and read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” It was through these two mediums that the system of dehumanization and oppression was revealed to me. I distinctly remember feeling horrified that the prisoners of Angola were required to pick cotton as a part of their daily tasks. Slavery was, after all, long ago abolished. However, I soon learned and continued to learn that nothing ever really goes away; it’s merely reinvented into a more easily digestible package ripe for public consumption.