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The Hip Hop Project

A project in opportunity

By TOM MEEK | May 8, 2007

3.0 Stars

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THE HIP HOP PROJECT: Cannon overcomes his mother’s death to buckle down at school.

Like basketball, hip-hop offers a way out of the inner-city cycle of violence and poverty. As the director of the Brooklyn-based organization of the title, Chris Rolle, a former street orphan abandoned by his mother, gives teens the opportunity he never had. Although slick and embossed by rhyme and beat, this documentary from Matt Ruskin and Scott K. Rosenberg shows Rolle at work. Rap poet Princess gets beyond her father’s incarceration and an abortion to go to college; the cocky Cannon overcomes his mother’s death to buckle down at school. No less compelling is Rolle’s own story, as he returns to the Bahaman slums of his youth and later confronts his unapologetic mother. In a big world, these triumphs may not amount to much, but they prove that some can rise up from unfathomable depths. Rolle’s passion and perseverance power the film, and along the way he gets a boost from rap mogul Russell Simmons and Bruce Willis.

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