Get the latest gossip
‘As We Speak’ Review: Kemba Examines When Artistic Expression Is Wielded as Evidence
In 'As We Speak,' hip-hop artist Kemba and director J.M. Harper take viewers on a journey of the ways rap lyrics have been weaponized in the courts.
The film editor of the Emmy-nominated series “Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” has made a willfully creative work that mimics the ways rap can be intimately observational, seemingly confessional even, but is also a feat of artistic expression. Utilizing Erik Nielson and Andrea Dennis’s book “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics and Guilt in America,” the film follows Kemba as he crisscrosses the nation to speak with fellow artists and then leaps the Atlantic to the U.K. Kemba and Harper don’t need to argue much that the musical genre’s nuance, metaphors and craft are of little interest to a legal system that continues to be tainted by racism and leverages bias.
Or read this on Variety