RAPPIN' ON CASTRO'S PAYROLL
Up-and-coming Cuban rappers valiantly battle cultural repression (and their moms).
BY ERIC K. ARNOLD
eric.arnold@eastbayexpress.com

Imagine a blend of Buena Vista Social Club, Rockers, Wild Style, Style Wars, and 8 Mile -- but with its own wholly unique flavor. Cuban Hip Hop All Stars, a new DVD release on Raptivism, comes off as precisely that. A semidocumentary that's more fact than fiction, the ninety-minute flick, directed by Joshua Bee Alafia, tells an endearingly poignant story about an underground subculture and the highly interesting characters who live in it.

The film reprises many of the same locations -- and even uses some of the same people -- as in Alafia's award-winning Cubamor (which screened locally at the 2003 SF Black Film Festival and the Hip Hop Film Festival), But while that flick was a love story about a stranger's infatuation with a foreign land, its culture, and its people, Cuban Hip Hop (which premiered Sunday night at the 2004 SFBFF) focuses on young rappers in Havana's burgeoning hip-hop scene -- quite an eye-opening perspective.

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