Came across this documentary, “Bling – A Planet Rock” – a look at the gross materialism in hip-hop (mainly the proliferation of “bling” in the late 90s) in the context of civil war in Sierra Leone. It came out in 2007 but I really want to see the full film, which I saw you can get on Amazon. Cool to see Raekwon, Tego Calderon, Kanye West in there…can’t judge till I see it, but from the trailer…looks like I’ll learn something.
The doc’s director, Raquel Cepeda, is a sister whose name I’ve seen around for a minute. I noticed she is a committee member of the Pop Conference from the Experience Music Project in Seattle this year. Her blog is choc-full of interesting things too for folks into music, travel, politics, latinidad, etce.
Check out this portion of the doc.