Top 10: Hip Hop Documentaries

After the release of the long-awaited documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, we thought of ten of the best hip hop documentaries. Check out our list below and click on the titles to stream most of the documentaries in full.

10. Rhyme & Reason

Shot in 1997, this documentary features interviews with around eighty hip hop artists on topics like violence, race and freestyling. It also covers the history of hip hop but don’t expect to hear anything groundbreaking. The director of Rhyme & Reason tracked down great MCs like Method Man, Fatlip, Redman, Nas and Guru. On the downside, the movie also has its fair share of second rate clowns like Da Bratt and Kriss Kross, for that reason it sticks to number 10.

9. King Of The Beats

Recent documentary featuring Psycho Les, Casanova Rud, TR Love and Minnesota. They get 40 bucks each to go diggin’ for crates. Casanova comes across as a loud mouth with a lot of stories from the good old days. TR Love is still passionate about vinyl and he misses the golden age of sampling. Minnesota seems to be a serious man who knows what he’s doing while Psycho Les drinks some beers while diggin. Strange though that the documentary doesn’t feature any actual beatmaking since they had to use the music they bought to make a beat… Something that Dublab’s Secondhand Sureshots did in a better way, for example.

8. The Carter

No matter what you think of Lil Wayne, he is kinda interesting in this documentary. A lot of the time he is the full-proof idiot you always expected him to be: drinking syrup, getting wasted and talking bullshit. But he also works tirelessly and somehow has the talent to create a good song once in a while. Safe to say, dude lives in his own world.