Celebrating the roots of hip hop and its potential while critiquing the current state of the culture, Sonali Aggarwal’s in-progress feature documentary takes a hard look at “Whatever Happened to Hip Hop?”
“I knew that I wanted to touch upon the subject of the messages and the imagery being used,” Aggarwal said. “It took a while to see that as the main focus.
“I was looking at a more traditional approach, breaking the culture into the four elements of graffiti, MCing, DJing and breakdancing. But traveling the country and talking to people wound up changing the focus of the project,” she said.
Aggarwal is packing “Whatever Happened to Hip Hop?” with interviews from old-school luminaries like KRS-One, MC Lyte, and Slick Rick, and performances by artists including Lyte, and locals Tone B. Nimble, Ang13 and Pugslee Atomz.
She promises that the final piece will include plenty of local and national figures, from hip hop’s early days through contemporary mainstream and underground acts.
