That's a Rap

 

THIS IS THE LIFE (2008) (B+) - The debut of Ava Duvernay ("13th," "Selma") is a loving tribute to Good Life, a southern California cafe that promoted clean living and hip-hop and which launched a few careers. Duvernay stuffs this documentary with more people than you can keep track of, especially considering that most of them are not household names (especially by their rap monikers).

Coming a little more than a decade after Good Life's brief heyday, the film allows just enough time to give the alumni some distance from the community they created but not too much time such that we're subjected to a bunch of droning nostalgic greybeards. The health-food venue, which launched an open-mic program in 1989, started to flourish in 1993 while retaining a true underground vibe. Swearing was not allowed, but MC battles still got hot and heavy. Duvernay makes good use of the extensive videotape archives from the camera that seemed to be constantly fixed on the stage. 

The talking heads -- really, there are a ton of them, including Duvernay herself, who performed in Figures of Speech with her partner Jyant -- are mostly laid-back and chill, still emanating happy thoughts regarding the collective karma of the place. It seemed like a truly nurturing scene in which the participants were genuinely more interested in creating art than in becoming music stars (though a few, like Jurassic 5, did break out). It's fun to watch a tight-knit group strive to pursue their best life.

SAMPLE THIS (2013) (B-minus) - This bizarre pastiche is a storytelling train-wreck, but it has an interesting premise at its core, and it's entertaining enough to justify 85 minutes of screen time with this documentary about the most sampled and admired riff from the early days of rap music.  The song is an early '70s update of the surf rock anthem "Apache," recorded by a bunch of studio musicians under the name the Incredible Bongo Band. 

This one-off from a guy named Dan Forrer starts out in disorienting fashion with former NFL star Rosie Grier and others waxing nostalgic about Bobby Kennedy's ill-fated run for president in 1968. You might think you are watching the wrong movie, until the connection is made, 10 or 15 minutes in, to Michael Viner, a Kennedy campaign worker who went on to produce pulpy movies and records. In a post-Monkees/Archies world, it was common to cobble together studio musicians or unreleased recordings to create a "band" and try to catch fire with a hit song.

This documentary, with somewhat annoying narration by Gene Simmons from Kiss, meanders down a few rabbit holes (including a long detour into the seedy story of one of the drummers who abused drugs and went crazy) and feels oddly detached from the rap community that seized on "Apache" and that addictive percussion ("Hear the drummer get wicked!"). For every Questlove and Afrika Bambaataa who weigh in, we also hear from old-school R&Bers Jerry Butler and Freda Payne (who happened to have dated Viner), as well as Viner's kin, who just aren't that interesting. But this is a nugget of rock/rap history, and this tale fills in a few more blanks that "The Wrecking Crew" might have missed.

BONUS TRACK

The Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache," the percussion beat that launched a thousand rap songs: