Musicians (and those wanting positive black characters) will hate this

Rating: 1/10 (31 December 2005)

I know Hustle & Flow was highly regarded and that I'm alone in my viewpoint, but as a musician I couldn't stand it. The best music in the movie is the Gospel music that supposedly inspires the protagonist "pimp with a heart of gold." Being inspired to be a rapper after hearing gospel music is like being inspired by basketball to take up bowling. What's the connection? Anyhow, it's all downhill after that.
For example, in the scene where the white dude teaches a woman the "hook," it's clear the director is not a musician because every time there was an edit the key of the tune changed. The "hook" itself was not a good one, neither catchy nor interesting: "You know it's hard out here for a pimp/When you're trying to get the money for the rent/With the Cadillac and gas money spent/We'll have a whole lot of bitches jumping ship." Okay, there's a chiasmus in the rhyme scheme (ABBA symmetry) which is quite sophisticated for rap. But the "woe is me, I'm a pimp" sentiment is laughable.
We then have every cliché in the book to show how hard he struggles. The only thing missing is a drunk mother like in 8 MILE. It ends with him having a hit single after getting into a gunfight and doing time, so I guess the moral of the story is "anyone without talent can succeed in rap if you are violent enough." Sadly, this is probably true.
Although I am completely against censorship, I found myself agreeing somewhat with those who felt films like this one, Get Rich or Die Trying' , etc. are a bad influence on everyone, particularly black youths. The fact is people are impressionable. If they weren't, advertisers wouldn't be spending millions to persuade us. So gang violence doesn't happen just because they saw a particular movie, but certainly these movies glorify and validate a lifestyle that gang members will then emulate. Sometimes life really does imitate art.
And as someone who has argued against the negative portrayal minorities in the media, I find it much harder to defend blacks since their negative portrayals are now being perpetrated by black filmmakers themselves. But you can't have it both ways: either the black community is badly served by these movies since blacks are really just good people like everyone else; or these films are truthful, blacks are to be feared and therefore the police are justified in racial profiling. What's is going to be? I sure hope it's the former.
Where's Spike Lee when you need him? He is the lone voice in the wilderness pointing out that rappers and gangstas are nothing more than minstrel acts -- gross caricatures of an entire community. People who think this is reality are selling themselves short.
To paraphrase Public Enemy (when rap actually had something to say), "50 Cent is a hero to most/But he never meant sh*t to me."