Word Is Bond (2018) Reviews

• All over the place... unfortunately

  MovieCriticOnline2018-02-25

  I wish it would have been better. There are so many Hip Hop documentaries, and some better than this. If you wanna see the raw style, go back to see Wild Style. The story is poorly structured. It just starts without any background whatsoever. No real introduction of any of them, so you would need to know who each rapper is before watching this and their history. It is just a bunch of random MCs giving us abstracts vignettes. Like random montage interviews without any beginning, middle, and ending, or character exposition. E.g. "I used to do this, and then I did that, and I feel like this." That isn't a story. A five minute expose may have worked, but no way 1:30 hours. In summary, if you know nothing about rap or any of the rapper you will learn nothing. You can skip this..

• Worth the watch, think Graffiti!

  jrneptune2018-03-04

  Gems of knowledge to be gleaned from watching. I start that way because later in the film it is explained that what is being discussed does not follow a formulaic linear and logical clear path but is more like seeing graffiti on a wall. Pick and choose what is meaningful for you. Camera work and sound first rate of course. I normally try to avoid adding spoilers but some of the points made were especially good and worth sharing as teasers. Professor Donda West is credited with turning the direction of a 15 year old from singing about money, killing and drugs because that is what he is hearing on radio and he wants to be famous to singing about his own life and what matters in his own reality and not some media fantasy. Loved the comments about the similarity between classic poetry and rap and where the names of terms used just different. I also enjoyed being educated on the difference between being an MC, Rapper, Lyricist, and the impact of ghost writers to music. It is disjointed as one reviewer pointed out but watching it is still worth the time. I would have given it a point more if it was done logically but then again it was probably written for the folks that it enjoy the graffiti format.