Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me heading to UAE big screen

With the release of the controversial Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me, we take a look at the portrayal of hip-hop and rappers in film.

Demetrius Shipp Jr in All Eyes on Me. Photo by Quantrell Colbert

The Tupac Shakur biopic, All Eyez on Me, arrives in UAE cinemas on June 29, having already enjoyed a decent box-office showing following its release in several global markets on June 16 – what would have been the rap star's 46th birthday.

It has also had its share of controversy, with several of the still-living stars portrayed in the film slamming it, including actress Jada Pinkett Smith and rapper 50 Cent.

In addition, Vibe magazine journalist Kevin Powell is taking legal action against the producers, accusing them of lifting details from his exclusive interviews with Shakur and using them in the film without permission.

The movie is the latest in a long line of attempts to bring hip-hop to the big screen, with varying results.

Wild Style, released in 1982, is generally considered the "first hip-hop movie".

Since then, hip-hop-inspired releases have ranged from the good (the critically acclaimed NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton in 2015, for example), to the bad (50 Cent's much-derided 2009 effort Before I Self Destruct), to the ridiculous (1991's Cool as Ice, a sort of remake of remake of Rebel Without a Cause, starring perennial figure of fun Vanilla Ice in the James Dean role).

It is no surprise that movie makers were quick to jump on the hip-hop bandwagon – there has always been a strong link between movies and popular music – from the heady days of big Hollywood song-and-dance spectaculars starring the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, to the overblown rock operas of the 1970s (Tommy, the Wall).

Most significant music genres have had at least some form of cinematic representation over the years – punk had its Jubilee and Sid and Nancy, mods Quadrophenia, disco Boogie Nights and Saturday Night Fever, and heavy metal This is Spinal Tap, Wayne's World and The Decline of Western Civilization.

Meanwhile, music icons such as Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash and Ian Curtis have undergone the biopic treatment.

In some ways, hip-hop is better suited for the big screen than most musical genres. The stories of many of the scene’s biggest stars are screenplay-friendly rags-to-riches tales of poor kids from the hood reaching for the stars and battling it out, often with a sprinkling of gang violence, radical politics, romance, drugs and even murder.

It is ready-made Hollywood gold, with a built-in audience of fans of the subjects.

It is a shame, then, that despite the cinematic nature of much of the history of hip-hop and its biggest stars, the genre has had more than its share of music.

Of course, there have been a few classics, but for every Straight Out of Compton or Boyz n the Hood there seem to have been multiple embarrassments such as Breakdance: The Movie, or flawed vanity projects such as the mumbling 50 Cent in Get Rich or Die Tryin.

Perhaps part of this is down to the disconnect between the subject matter and the filmmakers.

Hip-hop, after all, is more than a style of music.

It is a lifestyle, with an attendant culture including art, fashion, attitude, dance, background and politics – and it comes very much from the streets.

Filmmakers, on the other hand, with a few exceptions, tend to be middle-class art or film-school graduates, and so perhaps not well-placed to identify with someone such as Ice T, who grew up in a world of drugs, guns and violence.

Studio execs, meanwhile, tend to be uniformly white, monied and decidedly comfortable.

There is also a sense that hip-hop has already beaten film to the chase by absorbing movies into its culture.

From the beginning, hip-hop has borrowed from existing popular culture, cutting, copying and pasting it into new forms.

Whether it is Jay-Z sampling from Scarface or Annie, 2 Live Crew lifting from Full Metal Jacket, or Wu-Tang Clan borrowing from obscure Kung Fu movies, basing their whole existence on the genre (they completed the circle when they provided the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch's Japanese-influenced Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, in which RZA also appeared), hip-hop has already successfully appropriated cinema for its own ends – perhaps it is too late for cinema to return the favour?

Whether Bennie Boom’s Shakur biopic can, amid all the controversy, go some way to redressing this balance remains to be seen – but either way, its commercial success seems guaranteed.

Shakur’s name still inspires devotion in fans, and the longer his 1996 murder remains unsolved, the brighter his star seems set to glow.