“You may see us on TV, blinged out, but that’s an act. That’s a joke,” KRS-One says in Sonali Aggarwal’s documentary Whatever Happened to Hip Hop? “When Katrina hit, you saw the real hip-hop culture.”
With interviews and performances from Nikki Giovanni, Rhymefest, MC Lyte, George Clinton, Slick Rick, Jean Grae, and Afrika Bambaataa, among many others, Aggarwal digs deep into hip-hop’s roots, its commodification, and its continuing potential for empowerment and social change.
Whatever Happened to Hip Hop? screens Saturday at 6:35 PM in the Humboldt Park Art Fair‘s First Annual Film Festival. The festival runs from Noon to 9 PM at the Humboldt Park Boat House, 1400 N. Sacramento. It’s free.