Rap Sh!t Struggles to Find Its Footing, But Shows Promise: Review
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The post Rap Sh!t Struggles to Find Its Footing, But Shows Promise: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: For most young professionals working today, balancing day jobs with side hustles is an inevitable and exhausting reality. In our American Dream-obsessed culture, we must sacrifice a large part of our well-being in order to achieve our personal goals, professional ambitions, and ultimately some inkling of happiness and stability. However, for some like the reserved Shawna (Aida Osman) and the outspoken Mia (KaMillion), the grind itself can become fuel for inspiration to break away from the volatile, oppressive labor market.
Spitting rhymes while wearing a wrestler’s mask on Instagram Live gives Shawna as much room to exercise her creative muscles as it does permission to blow off steam from her soul-sucking job at a luxurious Miami hotel. Elsewhere, Mia juggles between musing her unfiltered thoughts to her thousands of Instagram followers, titillating her thirsty anonymous OnlyFans subscribers, and applying makeup to her rich, white clientele, all to provide for herself and her young daughter.
Despite being estranged high school friends, Shawna and Mia’s serendipitous reunion ends up being a blessing in disguise. During one fateful hangout, the two recognize their shared prowess for rapping, concocting a freestyle called “Seduce and Scheme” over a club-ready instrumental. With the support of Mia’s music-producing baby daddy Lamont (RJ Cyler) and their scouting acquaintance Chastity (Jonica Booth), Shawna and Mia try to keep the momentum of their hot new track going, even as the cutthroat music industry and the messy unpredictability of their day-to-day lives threaten to cut their 15 seconds of fame short.
A Little Offbeat: Rap Sh!t creator Issa Rae knows a thing or two about the challenges and rewards of the hustle. She built her success off of her popular crowdfunded YouTube series Awkward Black Girl, followed it up with five seasons of the beloved and brilliant HBO show Insecure, and developed a lucrative platform for Black creative voices through her production company Hoorae.
With Insecure in particular, Rae crafted a hilarious, smart, and sophisticated story about taking risks and cultivating your self-worth in order to figure out what you want and who you want to be. Rap Sh!t traverses similar thematic terrain, following two women resisting the pull of their circumstances as they attempt to make a name for themselves.
But unlike Insecure, which had its ideas, characters, tone, and stakes immediately clear from the get-go (ironic, given its title), Rap Sh!t seems a little unsure of itself, torn between being an amusing, laid-back comedy, a casually critical satire of the hip-hop scene, and a light but pointed drama about upward social and financial mobility. A lack of commitment to any of these leaves the show feeling overproduced and unfocused, running into the issue of being too much and not enough.
Rap Sh!t (HBO Max)
An Uneven Flow: Growing pains, of course, are a natural part of any TV series in its debut season, even for someone as established as Rae. Luckily, the chemistry between Osman and KaMillion helps Rap Sh!t coast through most of its storytelling bumps.
Shawna and Mia’s verbal dexterity and gleefully sexual rap style recall the work of other Black female rap artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Flo Milli, and City Girls, the latter of whom serve as executive producers of Rap Sh!t. Their rapport in the “Seduce and Scheme” freestyle in the pilot remains a season highlight, an exciting catalyst for what’s to come and a sweet depiction of how two people can be in the right place at the right time and unexpectedly awaken something in each other.
As enjoyable as it is to see their relationship rekindled in addition to their collaboration ignited, the writing on Rap Sh!t distributes an uneven amount of dramatic weight to their characters and that disparity is showcased in the performances as well.
Known for her charismatic online presence and co-hosting experience on the Crooked Media podcast Keep It, Osman doesn’t quite match the magnetism of her real-life personality on screen. Shawna is initially a little rigid in her ways, an attitude likely informed by a previous collaboration gone south with a former schoolmate (Jaboukie Young-White in ultimate scene-stealer mode).
When she gradually leans into her rap persona, she learns to loosen up and confidently step into her own power and sexuality. The development of this journey unfortunately feels rushed and Osman’s wooden performance makes it even more difficult to be compelled by her arc, bringing little emotional depth to a protagonist already lacking in interiority.
Although Osman comes alive most during her rapping scenes, those moments are far and few in between. Besides her dedication to songwriting and stealing credit card info from vexing hotel guests, the only other major Shawna subplot involves a weak, predictable love triangle between her long-distance law student boyfriend Cliff (Devon Terrell) and her flirty co-worker Maurice (Daniel Augustin). A Lawrence/Daniel situation, it is not.
A Strong Hook: On the flip side, Mia is a far more engaging and complex character and KaMillion effortlessly rises to the task of playing her, almost eclipsing Osman whenever they share a scene together. The Floridian rapper’s sharp comedic timing provokes a lot of laughs, as do her blunt observations on staying true to oneself both in life and in her art.
Mia’s strong-willed beliefs are particularly captivating to witness when she and Shawna discuss the vision for their group in Episode 2. During their conversation, Shawna is more intellectual, lamenting the dearth of political perspectives in contemporary female hip-hop and emphasizing the need to make a statement in order to stand out, whereas Mia is more visceral, arguing with blisteringly funny insight that real authenticity comes from doing their own thing without needing to pander.
What’s even more impressive is KaMillion’s deft ability to ground the dramatic beats into something tangible and poignant, like when she chats with her incarcerated father for an all-too-limited time or vents to Lamont about the loneliness of raising their daughter mostly on her own. It’s undeniable that KaMillion is having fun in this role and, considering her song “Fine Azz” was an opening theme for Rae’s other successful HBO production, A Black Lady Sketch Show, it feels like kismet for her to be a fully integrated part of the Issa Rae Universe.
Not Quite Harmonious: As for the other members of the Rap Sh!t ensemble, it’s also a bit of a mixed bag. Rae has a clear admiration for building a lived-in world and filling it with people whom audiences can identify with, as evidenced by the compelling supporting characters who populate Insecure. Still, that affection doesn’t always translate as well as it should here.
Take, for instance, the third episode, which pivots away from Shawna and Mia almost entirely and centers around Lamont, Maurice, and Chastity. We get a better glimpse into their lives outside of Shawna and Mia’s orbit, how each of them also struggle to make a steady income with their various enterprises, and the personal and financial effects of their decisions. The problem, however, is that none of their efforts go anywhere dramatically interesting and each subsequently ends on a question mark of a resolution.
Lamont is arguably the most intriguing of the bunch, someone who is as determined to make it as a music producer as he is in trying to be a better, more responsible co-parent. Cyler is a perfect fit for the role too, infusing humor and humanity into a character who, in less capable hands, would be reduced to a deadbeat dad stereotype.
Rap Sh!t (HBO Max)
We’re Live: The most distinctive feature of Rap Sh!t might also be its most glaring and likely polarizing issue: Much of the show employs POV shots of Shawna, Mia, and the rest of the cast texting, DM’ing, talking over FaceTime, and recording themselves on Tik Tok and Instagram Live.
This visual framework is certainly effective in establishing every character’s identity, their relationships, and their lifestyles (or rather, what they want people to think is their lifestyle). It also uniquely conveys the omnipresence of these apps, with Instagram specifically acting as a flawed but profitable platform for emerging artists looking to acquire social currency and brand credibility.
The actors try their best to adapt to this format, especially as they are seemingly required to endure long, unbroken takes in order to maximize the real-time effect of Instagram Live and FaceTime. However, one can only suspend their disbelief for so long that they’re genuinely communicating with each other or recording Instagram stories and not actually just talking at high-definition cameras.
Whether the abundant, repeated use of POV was a result of COVID-related restrictions or a desire to stray from conventional cinematography remains unclear. Whatever the intention, it’s a clunky, distracting contrivance that renders the narrative less emotionally immersive the more often it’s incorporated. It feels especially forced and artificial-looking during scenes that don’t really need it at all, whether that’s virtual FaceTime sex, intimate conversations on Instagram Live, or even casual surveillance on an iPhone camera. At a certain point, it begs one to ask: Would someone really be recording mundane situations on their phone this much?
Outside of the show’s social media interface-heavy visuals, the camerawork on Rap Sh!t is solid. Cinematographers Lucas Gath and Christine Ng capture some lovely, humid shots of Miami, continuing Rae’s sumptuous visual precision and sharp eye for location detail from Insecure. The title sequences are also inventive, each episode opening with a segment aesthetically styled after the overarching theme of that episode (e.g. an animation of a plane ticket in Episode 4 when Shawna and Mia embark on a trip to New York).
The Verdict: In a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Rae mentioned she conceived Rap Sh!t in an early draft of Insecure, wanting to incorporate her character’s love and skill for rapping into an actual narrative but knew it could be something separate from the show she was already making. That the six episodes of Rap Sh!t screened for critics was the ultimate result of that concept is a little underwhelming.
Rap represented both a fun and crucial window into the psychology of Rae’s Insecure stand-in. It plays an even more important role on Rap Sh!t, illustrating the barrage of personal, professional, and economic obstacles young Black women face in pursuing their dreams of creative self-expression, but the inert emotional conflicts and vaguely aimless plotting undermine the more entertaining, promising elements of the show.
In that same interview, Rae also noted that Rap Sh!t is like her “sophomore record” to Awkward Black Girl’s “mixtape” and Insecure’s “first album.” In that sense, Rap Sh!t plays more like a collection of demos for that sophomore record, containing nuggets of a good idea that just need a little more refinement and texture in order to be fully realized into something potentially great.
Where to Watch: Rap Sh!t drops Thursday, July 21st on HBO Max, with two episodes premiering at 9:00 p.m. ET. The eight-episode season continues with one episode debuting at the same time weekly, concluding on September 1st.
Trailer:
Rap Sh!t Struggles to Find Its Footing, But Shows Promise: Review
Sam Rosenberg
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