AMERICAN RAPSTAR
The ultimate documentary on SoundCloud Rap is a provocative look into the lives of underage millionaires. Kids that manage to combine an aggressive punk attitude with a blind allegiance to the dollar, who are compelled to share their life on social media, purchase their drugs from pharmacies, dirty their faces with tattoos and dye their hair all the colours of the rainbow. At the edge of the rainbow, however, there is a portrait of a cynical generation who not unlike XXXTentacion or Lil Peep have no qualms about going out as a firework as long as they do so as brightly as possible in the little time they have.
USA | 2020 | COLOR | DCP | 73' | ENGLISH
Once there was rock music, hippies and punk rock. Then came rap, house, grunge, lo-fi. The drugs have always been present, and have always been a thing for the marginalized groups. Add to this the fact that we are going through increasingly worsening times of inequity, plus the game-changing internet, and you get ‘American Rapstar’.
A fiery documentary which registers the pose, the attitude, the mumble recitation -and the abundance of pills- of Florida’s Soundcloud Rap. Which in turn would be disastrous to dismiss as a historical/geographical/aesthetic necessity. The ‘obscure’, manically depressive, underage scene of Soundcloud Rap, pays a deathly tribute to the system that breeds it, screaming (aflame) the modern-day tragedy. I.D.
DIRECTOR: Justin Staple
DoP: Michael Pessah, Justin Staple
MUSIC: Nathan Williams
EDITOR: Justin Staple
JUSTIN STAPLE
28year-old American director, photographer, editor and producer. He studied Media at the University of Chicago. He produced ‘The Therapist’ and he is very much involved in the contemporary music scene.
FILMOGRAPHY
2020 American Rapstar
2017 Your War (I'm One of You): 20 Years of Joan of Arc
