Wild Style

Written, produced and directed by Charlie Ahearn, this is regarded as the first hip hop narrative feature and as the first film to capture all four elements of the culture together: graffiti writers, MCs, DJs and B-boys. Raymond, a young man from the Bronx who writes on subway trains under the name Zoro, has contempt for those doing legal commissioned murals. When a journalist carries uptown hip hop culture into the downtown art world, the two scenes start colliding, and the film builds to a rap and breaking concert on the Lower East Side. Almost the entire cast are real figures playing versions of themselves, including Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink and Fab 5 Freddy, alongside Grandmaster Flash, the Cold Crush Brothers and the Rock Steady Crew. Its most striking legacy unfolded in Japan: in November 1983, a month before the Broadway release, roughly thirty of the cast and crew spent a month in Tokyo, the film screened in Shinjuku, the crew performed in clubs, and in their free time they set up boomboxes in Yoyogi Park and formed their own circles. Hip hop took root in Japan at precisely that moment, with b-boy crews appearing in the park after the tour and spilling out into the streets of Shibuya. Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Public Enemy have all sampled it, and Nas's Illmatic opens with dialogue lifted straight from the film. Who it's for: Anyone curious about hip hop's founding moment and the New York underground of the early 1980s. Who it's not for: Not for viewers seeking a tight plot, since the film runs as loose fiction closer to documentary.