Spike Lee once remembered that, in 1989, “those motherfuckers in the press were saying that Do the Right Thing was going to incite Black people to riot.” This is usually the set-up for us to remember Roger Ebert’s review of the movie, which reminded us that “Those articles say more about their authors than about the movie.” Of course, these fears—these premature, racist condemnations—were unfounded. But even if they weren’t, if authentic expressions of the experience of Black people in America were filled with enough pain to inspire protests in the street…well, what does that say about those trying to suppress those expressions? This is the question transposed to rap lyrics in J.M. Harper’s debut doc As We Speak, a didactic discussion of the legal war waged against a single kind of (conspicuously Black) writing.
Harper, editor of another Sundance rap doc, jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, brings on musician Kemba as our travel guide through the wide world of hip-hop lyricism—and the legal struggles breathing down its neck. When Paste wrote about Kemba in 2017 as the “best of what’s next,” writer Shawn Setaro pulled a run from a song that represented “a typical head-spinning passage” from the artist. Though we get some insight into Kemba’s writing style and thematic focus, our host is less a subject himself and more of a stilted proxy interviewer, speaking to fellow rappers and legal experts alike about an issue gaining traction in the courtroom: Lyrics presented as evidence. As Kemba takes us from the Bronx to Atlanta to L.A. to Chicago to London—meeting up with rappers like Killer Mike who speak to the current environment—we learn just how pervasive the expectation is in the scene that, if you’re facing charges, anything you rap can and will be used against you.
While Tipper Gore’s anger at the exquisite horniness of Prince led to America’s biggest public outcry around policing lyrics, the war on Black words has only gotten more targeted since we started branding “explicit” music. The prominent contemporary example is Young Thug’s RICO indictment. A judge ruled last November that 17 sets of lyrics by Young Thug and some of his co-defendants can be used as evidence in a trial dealing with gang-related charges. The inclusion of these verses as anything indicating criminal activity or state of mind implies that rap lyrics are nothing but written confessions—that rappers are not musicians participating in artistic creation (let alone free speech), but professional self-incriminators just waiting for a cop or DA to put in some earbuds.
As We Speak explains this clearly and cleanly, with candid legal experts holding our hands through a system already stacked against Black people. As prosecutors look for anything and everything to throw at (young, Black) defendants, constitutional protections of expression melt away under the excruciating heat of racism. Alongside this are timelines drawn of rap’s popular progression and a history of Black music pissing off white lawmakers; Black music has been blamed for everything from revolting against overseers to riling up white girls. When not explicitly in conversation with subjects who’ve been affected by the legal execution of this racist prejudice—like Mac Phipps, whose writing helped send him to prison for 20 years—the doc’s vitality is lost in its multi-pronged educational approach.
This isn’t helped by the overt artifice of Harper’s nonfiction, which sets up stagey scenes of everything from Kemba talking to someone in a record store to buying a two-way pager in a pawn shop. These obvious, stiff sequences give As We Speak the tone of a PSA, one rolled into your Civics classroom on a bulky tube TV when your regular teacher is out sick. When the film makes the claim that, actually, you could consider William Shakespeare to be a rapper of sorts, the vibe is complete: Yep, I’m in a “cool” English class now. Or, I’m in Romeo + Juliet, but at least that would have a sense of style to it.
A pervasive corniness runs through As We Speak. Transitions come from text messages; its sound effects sound like SpongeBob. When we go learn about drill in Chicago, for some reason, everything fades behind a black-and-white filter. The style doesn’t fit the content. You’ve got the grand history of Black music, and its history of surviving despite the ire of powerful white institutions, at your disposal. So why does this feel like I’m nodding off to an episode of 60 Minutes? And yet, perhaps because it’s otherwise handled so dully, even the cheese can be fun. A piece of dry academia, researching the racist hypocrisy of how our culture has been conditioned to interpret art, becomes an illustrative performance piece: A series of musician stereotypes (rap, country, metal, etc.) read out the same set of lyrics, prodding at our own culturally ingrained biases. When we hear the results from the researcher (and the source song the lyrics are from), we’ve already understood how the data is going to shake out.
This confidence doesn’t always last. Sometimes points aren’t just double-underlined, but circled in red ink with a “See me after class” written next to them. When Kemba interviews Lavida Loca, a U.K. rapper who refers to herself as the “King of Drill,” she does a hilarious impression of a scandalized, bewigged judge reading out her lyric “gun on my hip.” Later, that same cultural disconnect—stiff white folks not understanding that terms like “make a killing” don’t refer to murder but to profit—plays out in a dramatic courtroom setting, hammed up by actors. We already heard it straight from an artist. Trust us to listen.
When it’s not repeating its vital points, As We Speak is spreading itself too thin. While we’re in the U.K., we get a glimpse of the digital surveillance state slowly inflicting itself upon all facets of young people’s lives. Back in Chicago, conflict escalates between rappers who think authenticity in lyricism is the only way—that writing and performing anything else is poser behavior—and those who think telling on yourself is idiotic. Neither discussion, nor the brief look at some of the legal challenges that opponents of lyrics-as-evidence have brought to the courtroom, is given enough oxygen to add depth to As We Speak’s flattened topic. Rather, these complicating angles are noticed, then ignored in favor of emphasizing the doc’s simple thesis. The finale just sprawls out, shooting a shotgun approach to the end of its cinematic essay.
There’s a Twitter bot that runs through rejected vanity plate applications from the California DMV. A post might see a customer plead the case for the plate “DRMN BG” because they are “setting goals.” Sure, we see it as “dreamin’ big,” but the DMV’s response (“BG = Baby Gangster”) reads something ridiculous into it. These Urban Dictionary insights find references to drugs and gangs or sexual innuendo in the most unlikely of alphanumeric combinations. If the DMV thinks this guy is trying to put “baby gangster” on his car, rap lyrics might actually cause the place to implode. As We Speak reminds you that the judges of the world, the DAs, the legislators, the DMV license plate regulators—they’re all systematized embodiments of America’s racist culture, a culture that still desperately wants to profit from the art, music and style of Black people. But once the documentary has made its easy point, it doesn’t have much else on its mind aside from making it again and again. For some, that’ll be eye-opening enough, but I don’t think they’re the people who’re watching documentaries about rap lyrics.
Director: J.M. Harper
Release Date: January 22, 2024 (Sundance)
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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