7 Rap Concept Albums That Would Make Good Movies

In all of the hoopla surrounding Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ The Heist winning the Grammy for Best Rap Album over Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, one important detail went un-discussed: the former is a collection of singles and potential radio records, whereas the latter is much more ambitious. Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City plays like an in-depth character study, following Kendrick through his life in Compton; The Heist, despite its provocative title, feels like a random assortment of tracks with an emphasis on positivity.

Kendrick Lamar’s album represents the kind of rap full-length that’s a rarity in today’s marketplace. Largely influenced by the hit-after-hit albums dropped by 50 Cent in the early 2000s, modern-day hip-hop releases can’t be bothered by conceptual narratives and underlying, unifying themes. It’s popular radio stations first, artistic risk-taking second, if not third or fourth.

Depending on who you’re talking to, this is either sad news or a non-issue. Around here? Records that operate more like motion pictures than FM playlists are always appreciated. A prime example: Prince Paul’s sprawling hip-hop epic A Prince Among Thieves, a story-driven album featuring in-character verses from Big Daddy Kane, Everlast, De La Soul, Xzibit, and more.

Today marks the disc's 15th anniversary, meaning there have now been 15 years through which its fans have hoped for a film adaptation. And also meaning it’s the perfect catalyst for our list of 7 rap concept albums that would make good movies.

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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Release date: May 23, 2000

In the mood for a science fiction mind-screw that’s visually and sonically mesmerizing but narratively incoherent? Check out the 2011 film Beyond the Black Rainbow, director Panos Cosmatos’ ‘80s-inspired trip into the oddest of Kubrickian/Lynchian genre cinema.

Fans of Del the Funkee Homosapien and Dan the Automator’s 2000 collaborative album Deltron 3030 will feel right at home. With its spacey beats and disorienting structure, Deltron 3030 is essentially Beyond the Black Rainbow: The Album, albeit with a slightly more streamlined story. Here, the hero Deltron Zero is an interplanetary soldier fighting against the New World Order, a governmental machine dedicated to stripping humans of their rights and their love of hip-hop music. Instead of gunplay, though, Deltron Zero gets into heady rap battles with the NWO’s coldest lyricists.

Watch Beyond the Black Rainbow’s excellent trailer, insert the lyrics heard within Deltron 3030, and you’ll have a sense of what the film version could be. Then you’ll hope some insanely ambitious director makes it happen as soon as humanly possible.

Release date: February 23, 1999

Originally, Prince Paul wanted to make an actual movie companion piece for A Prince Among Thieves, but financial setbacks and then a period of time in which Chris Rock had the rights but did nothing have kept those plans at bay. It’s, sadly, a missed opportunity, too, because Prince Paul’s exceptional audio movie has all the makings of a genre-bending gem.

Just because he deserves, and will no doubt soon receive, better projects than That Awkward Moment, Michael B. Jordan should be cast as Tariq, the story’s aspiring rapper who resorts to a variety of seedy endeavors to raise enough cash to record a demo and impress Wu-Tang mastermind RZA. Along the way, Tariq gets into the pimp game (under the tutelage of “Count Macula”), lands behind bars (“Handle Your Time”), gets mixed up in drug-dealing, and ultimately finds himself in a deadly standoff with fellow wannabe MC, and former best friend, True (“You Got Shot”).

Think the Odyssey-like feel of Inside Llewyn Davis, but with more guns, girls, and narcotics, and less cats.

Release date: May 22, 2001

It’s about time Michael K. Williams landed a leading role in a movie. Starting with The Wire’s Omar Little and currently thriving with Boardwalk Empire’s Chalky White, the Brooklyn-bred actor has been slaughtering dramatic roles on quality TV shows, but on the big screen? He’s been relegated to strong supporting roles in film good (Gone Baby Gone, 12 Years a Slave) and, well, trash (Miracle at St. Anna).

Sticky Fingaz’s Blacktrash, though, represents the perfect starring vehicle for Williams, a fellow New Yorker who’s authentic grit, bald head, and scarred face make Mr. Fingaz seem about as rugged as Wayne Brady. In Blacktrash, he’d have a dynamic character to play—if it’d follow the album, Williams’ breakthrough flick would have powerful spazz-out moments (taken from “Get It Up”), guy/girl drama (“Cheatin’”), courtroom intrigue (“State vs. Kirk Jones”), and racial tension (“What if I Was White”). All of which, there’s no doubt, Williams could murder.

Release date: October 18, 2001

There’s a very specific kind of movie that’s a shoe-in for Sundance Film Festival consideration. It’s a long-running joke—the movies Sundance accepts are always shot on the cheap, heavy on dialogue, and aggressively emo.

That’s not always a bad thing. With the right material, monotone dramas can be quietly riveting, and the concept behind Masta Ace’s Disposable Arts album seems just right for a Sundance crowd-pleaser. The main character is an ex-con who returns home to Brooklyn, attends a school that specializes in flimsy, unsubstantial arts, and rebels against how much his beloved BK borough has changed.

The obvious choice to direct which would be Spike Lee, but his often abrasive style feels a bit off for Masta Ace’s more contemplative approach. The better fit: Pariah director Dee Rees, a Sundance veteran who’s proven she’s capable of zeroing in on a character without inserting any of her own agendas. Sorry, Spike.

Release date: September 13, 2005

One of the best rap albums of the 2000s, North Carolina trio Little Brother’s first, and only, major label record, The Minstrel Show, uses humor and biting satire to skewer racial stereotypes. At its center is the fictional TV network UBN (U Black N*ggas Network), a superficial and unprogressive channel that airs commercials like “5th and Fashion,” telling viewers where to shop if they want three pairs of “Furberry shoelaces” for a mere $25.

And in that, you have the next Hollywood Shuffle, a worthy successor to director/actor Robert Townsend’s 1987 cult comedy classic. For The Minstrel Show, there’d be a young, wide-eyed black actor (dream casting: Donald Glover) who, like Townsend’s Bobby Taylor, endures the worst kinds of racial ignorance as he rises from sitcom bit player to the lead on Tyler Perry’s House of Payne.

Release date: May 6, 1996

It’s the ultimate hip-hop midnight movie, one that’s screaming for a hungry, no-fucks-given indie horror filmmaker to direct.

Might we suggest Hobo with a Shotgun’s Jason Eisener? A self-proclaimed rap head, Eisener has the perfect anything-goes sensibilities to bring Kool Keith’s Dr. Octagon alter-ego to the big screen. And with the psychedelic and nightmarish Dr. Octagonecologyst as the source material, the grotesque possibilities are vast.

The perfect casting: Kool Keith himself to play Dr. Octagon, the rapper’s disturbing fictional creation, an alien surgeon who sleeps with his crew of brainwashed nurses, murders the patients he abducts, and creeps around with green/yellow skin and a mean afro. It’d be part slasher movie, part exploitation throwback, somewhat sci-fi freakout, and all kinds of wrong. A future cult classic in the waiting.

Hell, it wouldn't even need a plot; like the album itself, Dr. Octagonecologyst the movie would be best served by an enhanced sense of WTF, the sort of tone midnight movie masters like Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch nailed with The Holy Mountain and Eraserhead, respectively.

Release date: September 17, 2002

Because doesn’t hip-hop need its very own 2001: A Space Odyssey, right?

Mr. Lif, the lyrically underrated Boston MC on El-P’s sadly now-defunct Def Jux label, got super ambitious with his 2002 record I Phantom, focusing its 14 cuts to “the exploration of the dynamics of everyday life, and the pursuit of our dreams, in a rapidly decaying society.”

A peppy Will Smith album, it’s not, but that’s fine for Mr. Lif, a cynical but intelligent rapper who wallows in dark realities better than most. I Phantom opens with death (via “A Glimpse at the Struggle”), transitions into resurrection (“Return of the B-Boy”) and not so happily concludes with armageddon (“Earthcrusher” into the frantic and bleak “Post Mortem”), giving the album a scope that’s all-encompassing and spans generations.

Much like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Give the I Phantom flick to a wish-list director like Nicolas Winding Refn and let him run wild. There’d be character-driven moments (taken from “New Man Theme”) and joyful highs (“Success”), but ultimately Refn would get to sucker-punch viewers in the movie’s final act, a three-headed wave of cinematic destruction that’d directly borrow visuals rapped by Mr. Lif in “Iron Helix,” “Earthcrusher,” and “Post Mortem.”