A friend invited me to a screening yesterday for Raquel Cepeda's documentary Bling: A Planet Rock (see the trailer here). The film examines commercial hip hop's proliferation of the materialistic culture of bling, and how this affects people an ocean away-- namely in Sierra Leone. Rappers pose with their jewels, and flash their grills, but the money used to buy these gems trickles into a war-torn society, supporting a civil war where children kill children, women are raped, rebels severing body parts to strike fear into the people. These are the blood diamonds of Africa. Now that peace has been declared in the country, Cepeda enlists rappers Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan, Paul Wall and Tego Calderon to travel to Sierra Leone to see the diamond mines, visit the people, and see how massively hip hop music can affect a nation, culturally and politically. I thought the film was enlightening.
There was a Q&A session with the director after the screening and she mentioned how she purposely picked certain artists for this project. Sending rappers like Mos Def or Kanye West to Sierra Leone doesn't shift any views, but what about someone like Paul Wall? He certainly surprised me. So did Tego:
"I didn't go to school, but I went to Africa."
There was a Q&A session with the director after the screening and she mentioned how she purposely picked certain artists for this project. Sending rappers like Mos Def or Kanye West to Sierra Leone doesn't shift any views, but what about someone like Paul Wall? He certainly surprised me. So did Tego:
"I didn't go to school, but I went to Africa."
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