"I showed the trailer to my friends & everybody was laughing like a motherfucka. They thought it was real" – Too Short
"Gangsta Rap: The Glockumentary" will have its theatrical release Friday, March 2 on nearly two dozen screens in the L.A. area. The feature-length comedy is independently released by Ill Ville Films/Big Business.
Written and directed by Damon "Coke" Daniels, who co-wrote My Baby’s Daddy with Eddie Griffin for Miramax, "Gangsta Rap: The Glockumentary" owes its street cred to Daniels’ extensive turn in the world of hip hop, during which his group Madkap (Loud Records) toured with the likes of Notorious B.I.G, The Pharcyde, Twista, Common, The Alkaholiks and the Wu Tang Clan. Daniels also served as producer, alongside Craig Chapman, Chris Dreyer and Paul Stewart, who also handled the film’s music supervision.
Shot in mockumentary style, with Daniels in the role as filmmaker, Gangsta Rap follows the flickering fortunes of Gangsta Rap, "the hardest group you’ve never heard of," a trio of old school, West Coast rappers: Murder Mike, Du Rag and DJ Ballistics. Despite run-ins with the law, shady dealings, numerous child custody cases, and a serious slide into irrelevance with the public, these self-proclaimed godfathers of gangsta rap are hell-bent on staging a comeback.
With fresh tracks such as "My Mamma’s A Bitch" and "In My House Shoes," Gangsta Rap is angling to re-establish their supremacy. The group originally burst on the scene in the mid-eighties, virtually ruling the West Coast underground into the next decade. Following a slew of setbacks and some vicious in-fighting, the O.G.s put the past behind them to take one more stab at success.
The film features an ensemble cast of both real-life rappers and stand-up comedians, including Howie Bell (P. Diddy Presents…The Bad Boys of Comedy; Jamie Foxx’s Laffapalooza), Gerald Johnson (aka, Slink Capone The Cutaluff, produced by Too Short), Schuylar Harvey, Leslie (aka Leslie Jones; HBO’s Def Comedy Jam; Girlfriends; National Security) Tomy’a Bowden (The Steve Harvey Show; Dahmer), Clifton Powell (Ray; Woman, Thou Art Loosed) and Sam Maccarone, director of the recently released National Lampoon’s TV: The Movie and also features cameos by rappers Too $hort and GLC.
