Earlier this year, in January, we reviewed the inaugural installment of WorldStarHipHop’s new documentary series, The Field. That first episode, subtitled “Violence, Hip-Hop, and Hope in Chicago,” featured several teen rap crews, concerned Southside parents, and veteran rapper and Kanye West-affilate Rhymefest as an anti-violence mentor. As a localized rap documentary, The Field: Chicago was yet another distressing panorama in yet another year obsessed with the poverty and bloodshed of Chiraq, so-called.
Nine months after the release of The Field: Chicago, WorldStar is back with a second episode of The Field, this time concerned with the slang, segregation, and strip clubs of Miami. While the earlier Chicago installment of The Field largely excluded "adult" perspectives, this latest Miami installment features native rap legends Trick Daddy and Uncle Luke as the senior, superego guidance of the filmmakers’ narrative, with Trick recounting the 1980 McDuffie riots (which killed 18 civilians) in Overtown, and Luke expounding the distinction between South Beach and proper Miami’s respective club scenes. This senior insight balances in contrast with the youthful reportage and commentary from rap upstarts Denzel Curry, Dred Skeezy, Ice "Billion" Berg, YD, and others. Gunplay makes an appearance, of course, sounding remarkably sober, introspective, and wise as he recounts his rise from Carol City to national acclaim. Yet the final cut is bigger than just a rap documentary.
Having twice watched this latest project, we spoke with WorldStarHipHop founder Q, who hopes to expand his website’s documentary coverage and build WorldStar’s capacity to cover hood news in real-time. It’s an emerging, ambitious new direction for WorldStar, possibly signaling an evolution above and beyond WorldStar's notorious origins. One can hope.
What’s the overarching mission with The Field series?
It first came about last year when all the killings was going on in Chicago. The theme nickname, “Chiraq,” it came to my attention that you need to cover this, and figure out how we can talk to these kids, and see what’s going on out there in these city streets because most people that share about it aren’t really in tune because the media doesn’t sketch you inside that gritty realness, and speak to them, and get that full scoop. All they wanna do is show you the bad, they don’t wanna hear the story with it. So we decided to, with a close-up inspection of Chicago, it’s breeding ground for buzzworthy rappers, and a city plagued by gang violence and murder.
We decided to go out and do our first installment, and we look at the dude once the success came about with the Chicago field documentary. I immediately said we need to continue with this different stretch of cities in the country and just get their voices heard.
Then that’s when I was intrigued with Miami because Miami is very known for South Beach, the women and the clubs and the nightlife. I felt like it was great to focus on them because people are dying over there for money every night. So I just wanted to capture their stories and hear their tales about what goes on in their communities.
How would you categorize the series? Are these hip-hop documentaries? Or something else?
Yeah, we know that in these cities that are stricken by poverty and police harassment, that’s hip-hop. That’s the streets, that’s the inner city. I’m from Hollis, Queens, and that’s what I see. Crime, murder, robberies, you know, all that stuff that the media is scared to come out and report, but that’s just my every day. When I wake up to go outside, I saw all this. I didn’t even watch the news. I just go outside and watch the news.
With hip-hop being a great influence in the city streets, nationwide, worldwide—why not use this platform to add a voice to these communities that are so often forgotten?
A key difference between the earlier Chicago doc and the new Miami doc is that you guys seem to have interviewed all across Miami. How big was the team with the interviews, camera crews?
We had our director Mandon Lovett, and he did our first installment and will do the Miami as well. We had a producer named Marquis [Daisy], and he brought experience to the table to help us have an actual producer this time. Two videographers that go out in the streets. They’re local guys too, so they really helped out a lot to have local guys in the area that can capture what’s going on and also direct us to areas that we forgotten.
We also had Javier Sang, who kinda produced, helped us out finding talent. We had great talent like Trick Daddy, Uncle Luke, Iceberg, a local-known artist, and Gunplay. We had a good lineup of artists in the area as well as DJ Nasty from 99 Jamz. So we all collectively did a great job placing it all together. Five team members, total.
Was Javier Sang primarily responsible for casting as far as the more senior folks and the younger rappers?
Esdras Thelusma, he was helping us find these local artists. Javier brought in Gunplay and Trick Daddy. It was all a group effort, and we all definitely worked hard together, but Javier is one of the video content managers in Worldstar, so he sees a lot of artists contacting and posting videos all the time. We all worked hard collectively to push this project, but definitely the local directors did a great job getting us in these streets in Miami to get interviews.
How’d you guys decide on the neighborhood-by-neighborhood format?
With Miami, there’s so many towns, and they all respectfully known in their communities. We just wanted to capture each town, each area, Little Haiti, Little Havana, there’s so many little cities within Miami Beach where people are have their own style, their own voice. Kind of like New York’s five boroughs; we figured Miami is similar with its own styles that connect the dots.
I THINK IT’S OUR DUTY TO GET THESE VOICES HEARD.
Are you happy with the response so far?
I think that’s important especially what’s going on with Ferguson right now. I think it’s our duty to get these voices heard. I think it’s more stories like Mike Brown out there, and I think police brutality is big. People may criticize me for showing those harsh images, but that’s reality, this is real. I can’t sugarcoat what’s happening outside. There’s a beheading that’s released of an American journalist, and people don’t want to see that, but that’s the harsh reality. We can’t constantly sweep dirt under the rug. For us to learn, we have to face our fears and face reality.
After doing something like this, a serious documentary project, do you imagine that WorldStar is a place that would cover something like Ferguson right now? Is that the direction of WorldStar at this point?
I’m really into doing these types of documentaries, and I strive to be a perfectionist, so I really try to take time and put things out. I don’t like to just send someone out with a camera to record and then dump it out on the site. I like to really take time and put something great together so it’s more impactful, so people can relate and talk more about it than watching just a little clip of what’s going on in current affairs. But as we grow, we’re going to continue doing more documentaries and also covering what’s happening, live news. That’s the ultimate goal for WorldStar, to start covering live news as well.
At the screening, I asked about whether you had another documentary in the works, and you mentioned at least the possibility of Memphis for The Field? What's got you interested in Memphis?
I think that’s something definitely talked about amongst the team, as well as Philadelphia. And we looking to go more West Coast. I’m leaning towards Oakland, Cali., and that’s something I was looking at, and we would make our announcement as far as that being our next installment, but we definitely debating. We have people asking us to come to Detroit, the Carolinas, so many offers, and we’re very pleased that everyone is engaged and wanna help with our documentary.
A lot of people are saying, “I can film, I can write, I can produce.” Everyone is engaging, and that’s a positive point, and I feel like it’s our responsibility as a leader of the Internet space for entertainment. We need to go out and get these stories heard. I’m thinking more California and West Coast.
