Just watched Hustle & Flow. You can watch the trailer here. IMDb users give it a rating of 7.6. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this movie with the last recommendation from Liam when he told me I needed to watch this. I’ve had this movie for some time and it’s been queued along with the other hundreds of movies that is waiting for me to watch.
You can check out the DVD or soundtrack at Amazon.com.
Spoilers: (Show)
Movie was quite interesting and said a lot about how hard it is to become a music artist. The connection with the audience was really strong and the music the movie came up with was actually pretty catchy, even though I mostly dislike rap. I guess this is what you call Rap & Pop, like the genre Eminem creates in.
The movie starts up with a pimp named DJay, where he houses 3 women, 2 black and 1 white. In the morning, he pimps the white lady, where she provides “services” in the back of people’s car. One black lady (already has a kid) is a stripper at a local strip club. The other black lady is currently pregnant, and can’t contribute to this “family”.
As a side job, DJay also sells pot.
The story makes a turn when a bum offers to trade a mini keyboard (piano) for some pot, which brings back memories for DJay. He used to scratch and rap when he was in high school and he wanted to revive that feeling. He bumps into an old buddy Key (Clyde) who does recordings (for church or lawyers) and Key requests the help of a church buddy Shelby who does the synthesizing. Together they start making some pretty cool music. They also made a music room and sound proofed it by stapling cup holders onto the wall.
Do note, this little family is hardly making it through. Drama starts up and the highest source of income gets kicked out of DJay’s house. Later on, the request the help of the pregnant woman to sing the chorus of the song, and she does quite a good job!
All along the story, DJay claims he knows Skinny Black, a big time rapper now who grew up on the other side of town and his biggest chance of making it big was to get Skinny Black to support his music.
BIG SPOILERS! The story continues and more truth is revealed… He seems to have succesfully convinced Skinny Black to give his music a shot, but when he enters the restroom, he finds out that Skinny Black threw the tape into toilet. He got so angry, she started punching Skinny Black. One of Skinny’s minions walks in and sees DJay punching Skinny while the other hand holding a gun. Shots got fired and DJay manages to escape after wounding one of the minions. They call the cops on him and he gets arrested and is put into jail for 12 months.
On the other hand, Nola, the white female was left in charge of trying to get the music on the air. After going to many many local radio stations and providing “services”, DJay’s song is finally aired and it becomes a big hit. In jail, there were these 2 prison guards who takes notice of DJay and starts telling their story of how they’re trying to start a band and if he could listen to his tape. He takes the tape and says what Skinny said, “Everybody gotta have a dream.”