Beats, Rhymes and Cin­e­ma: Men­ace II Society

This essay series looks at how five films released dur­ing rap’s gold­en era – King of New York, New Jack City, Juice, CB4 and Men­ace II Soci­ety – helped to shape Amer­i­can hip hop cul­ture. We speak to film­mak­ers, rap­pers and his­to­ri­ans to find out why these icon­ic works con­tin­ue to endure.

When John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood was released in 1991, it made an instant impact on audi­ences who were drawn to its emo­tive sto­ry of a kid mak­ing it out of South Cen­tral Los Ange­les and into col­lege. Yet to some the film was a sani­tised ver­sion of life in the hood, which trad­ed the grit­ty social com­men­tary present in gang­ster rap for a far more palat­able mes­sage of hope.

Released just two years lat­er, Men­ace II Soci­ety took audi­ences to a far dark­er place – if both films exist­ed on a 12-inch sin­gle, it’s fair to say that Boyz n the Hood would be the radio edit to Men­ace II Society’s uncut ver­sion. ​“We want­ed to make the antithe­sis to Boyz n the Hood,” reflects screen­writer Tyger Williams, who wrote Men­ace II Soci­ety. ​“Boyz was all about the one kid who makes it out, but that was just a fairy tale. So many kids nev­er make it out the hood, and I was more inter­est­ed in telling their story.”

Direct­ed by Allen and Albert Hugh­es, Men­ace II Soci­ety is a graph­ic account of life in Watts, LA. It cen­tres on best friends Kane (Tyrin Turn­er) and O‑Dog (a career-best Larenz Tate), two teenagers search­ing for direc­tion in a neigh­bour­hood that only points one way – straight to the bot­tom. The Hugh­es broth­ers and Williams were in their ear­ly twen­ties when the film was released, and as such it con­tains an unflinch­ing raw­ness which you sus­pect an old­er film­mak­er would have shied away from explor­ing. Or, as Williams puts it, ​“We were so young, we hadn’t devel­oped any restraints yet!”

This lack of restraint is appar­ent from the out­set, with the open­ing scenes show­ing Kane and O‑Dog vis­it­ing a local cor­ner shop to buy some beer. They are instant­ly met with hos­til­i­ty from the Kore­an pro­pri­etors, who harsh­ly scorn them. ​“Shame on your moth­er!” When O‑Dog replies with the immor­tal line, ​“What did you say about my mom­ma?” it’s obvi­ous where things are head­ed, as the black youth shoots both shop keep­ers dead and then steals the CCTV recording.

Just two years ear­li­er, 15-year-old school­girl Latasha Har­lins was shot in the head by Kore­an con­ve­nience store own­er Soon Ja Du in South Cen­tral LA – a vio­lent crime that occurred just 13 days after the Rod­ney King beat­ing. Despite the shoot­ing being caught on tape and clear­ly show­ing Har­lins doing noth­ing to moti­vate the attack, Ja Du was sen­tenced to just 400 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. This was angri­ly per­ceived as an injus­tice by the hip hop com­mu­ni­ty, with 2Pac per­fect­ly sum­maris­ing this sen­ti­ment in the track ​‘Hell­ra­zor’: ​“Dear Lord if ya hear me, tell me why / Lit­tle girl like Latasha, had to die / She nev­er got to see the bul­let, just heard the shot / Her lit­tle body couldn’t take it, it shook and dropped / And when I saw it on the news I see bus­ta’ girl killin’’Tasha / Now I’m screamin’ fuck the world…”

By revers­ing the two roles and instead depict­ing a black youth killing a Kore­an busi­ness­man, Men­ace II Soci­ety active­ly echoed the frus­tra­tions of the hip hop com­mu­ni­ty. And as O‑Dog and Kane are lat­er aggres­sive­ly ques­tioned by the LAPD for their crime, the film ques­tions why the legal sys­tem fails to offer up the same empa­thy and inten­si­ty when attempt­ing to bring the killers of black youth to jus­tice. ​“There’s noth­ing more sub­ver­sive than being in your ear­ly twen­ties and mak­ing a movie,” says Williams of the noto­ri­ous cor­ner store scene. “[That scene] was a com­ment about Latasha but also about the black com­mu­ni­ty reclaim­ing some­thing, which was real­ly hap­pen­ing as – for right or wrong – Kore­an stores in LA were get­ting shot up after Latasha’s murder.”

If Boyz n the Hood’s moral com­pass is based on cause and effect, then Men­ace II Soci­ety is notable for its proud rejec­tion of one. The acts of vio­lence it depicts are much more ran­dom in nature, with any­body from des­per­ate drug addicts to inno­cent teenagers sus­cep­ti­ble to spon­ta­neous dri­ve-by bul­lets. In this world, death is just around the cor­ner, which makes the idea of sal­va­tion seem redun­dant. At one point, Kane appears apa­thet­ic when he’s forced to watch It’s A Won­der­ful Life with his grand­par­ents, who proud­ly hang pic­tures of Jesus Christ on their liv­ing room wall. A quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry on, this scene still feels like a damn­ing assess­ment of the brit­tle façade of the Amer­i­can Dream.

“Back in the 1990s, every grand­ma in the hood had a tra­di­tion­al pho­to of white Jesus hang­ing on their wall,” says Williams. ​“But I nev­er under­stood why we prayed to this ide­alised image of white­ness, which fails to ben­e­fit any­one that looks like you. I want­ed to show how the reli­gion that fuels the Amer­i­can dream [in It’s A Won­der­ful Life] is irrel­e­vant for Kane and his friends.” This is bru­tal­ly punc­tu­at­ed by the trag­ic fate of Sharif (Vonte Sweet), a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter who brave­ly rejects gang life for reli­gion, yet still catch­es a stray bul­let to the chest. ​“Sharif’s death shows blacks kids can­not afford to wait around for a mir­a­cle to hap­pen,” sug­gests Williams. And this bleak back­drop, which rejects the inher­ent­ly hope­ful idea of reli­gion, turns the mur­der­ous O‑Dog into an unex­pect­ed anti-hero, with the teen, who Williams framed on Joe Pesci’s Tom­my DeVi­to in Good­fel­las, at least attempt­ing to take his fate into his own hands.

Men­ace II Soci­ety was released dur­ing a dif­fi­cult peri­od for the peo­ple of Los Ange­les, as ten­sions boiled over fol­low­ing the per­ceived injus­tices around the fates of Rod­ney King and Latasha Collins. This sparked the Watts riots of ​’92, which result­ed in the deaths of 50 peo­ple. Per­haps inevitably, there was a back­lash against Men­ace II Soci­ety, with crit­ics express­ing con­cern that the film would accen­tu­ate ugly racial stereo­types and glo­ri­fy a return to riot­ing. ​“Before we made the film, there was a group of pow­er­ful African Amer­i­can film pro­duc­ers who wrote a peti­tion against us,” admits Williams.

“They were call­ing on the head of New Line Cin­e­ma to block the release of the film and warned it would result in vio­lent riots as the film was social­ly irre­spon­si­ble. We had to shut down film­ing for a week and were told to add more heart to the film.” Fol­low­ing the film’s release there were sev­er­al inci­dents of shoot­ings at pub­lic screen­ings, which Williams describes as ​“a tragedy” before adding, ​“We didn’t inspire young black males to shoot up those cin­e­mas – they were inspired by Amer­i­ca not car­ing about them. Our inten­tion wasn’t to glo­ri­fy vio­lence but to height­en in order to empha­sise a soci­etal mes­sage, just like Scors­ese did with Mean Streets. Look, if O‑Dog is your idol then we can’t help you.”

Williams believes that the hos­til­i­ty towards the film stemmed from the fact it tapped into one of Hollywood’s great­est fears – name­ly, a black man bar­ing arms. He explains, ​“Steven Sea­gal could make all these movies where he shoots every­one and on the poster he’s clutch­ing a machine gun, but I remem­ber our pro­mo­tion­al poster got changed by the stu­dio. Orig­i­nal­ly it had O‑Dog clutch­ing a gun but this was air­brushed out and they turned his hand into a clenched first. I guess Hol­ly­wood was scared to death of a black man hold­ing a gun.” Yet even if the mar­ket­ing of the film was marred by con­tro­ver­sy, the film still found a wide audi­ence, tak­ing $28m at the US box office and win­ning praise from esteemed crit­ics such as Roger Ebert. It even took home the Best Movie award at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards, ahead of Juras­sic Park and Schindler’s List.

Its suc­cess felt like a vic­to­ry for hip hop cul­ture, accord­ing to West Coast rap leg­end (and Watts native) Ras Kass. Cit­ing Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 album ​‘Good Kid, M.A.A.D City’ – an album with a nar­ra­tive struc­ture clear­ly mould­ed in Men­ace II Society’s image – Kass explains how the film opened the door for a whole new gen­er­a­tion of rap­pers to paint a more graph­ic pic­ture of life in inner city Amer­i­ca. ​“When the crack head in Men­ace offers to suck O‑Dog’s dick in exchange for drugs, that was crazy, as you see that kind of thing every day in the hoods of Watts and Comp­ton,” he says. ​“For my friends, who were gang mem­bers and killers, Men­ace II Soci­ety was more like a doc­u­men­tary than a movie. It inspired me and oth­er rap­pers [such as Kendrick] as it showed us noth­ing was off lim­its in terms of how we could tell our sto­ries. We didn’t have to tone it down.”

Accord­ing to Daryl ​‘DMC’ McDaniels, one third of leg­endary New York rap group Run DMC, Men­ace II Soci­ety was the ​“wake-up call hip hop need­ed”. While he acknowl­edges that O‑Dog can be inter­pret­ed as glo­ri­fy­ing gun cul­ture, he firm­ly believes that the film’s haunt­ing end­ing achieves the oppo­site: ​“I think [the film] showed hip hop that all this gangs­ta stuff is no joke. It’s scary. It’s unpre­dictable. This ain’t no gangs­ta rap music fan­ta­sy, it’s real out here in these streets. It showed hip hop that it’s not just about mak­ing records about the streets, it’s about try­ing to sur­vive. It made a lot of folks wake up and find a safer, bet­ter way to get out of the ghet­to, before what hap­pened at the end of the movie hap­pens to you.”

Williams notes that part of the rea­son why the film has endured is the way it ​“brave­ly” equates America’s inner cities to a war zone. He says this was ini­tial­ly a lot more appar­ent, as ​“the orig­i­nal poster had a tagline about the aver­age sol­dier in Viet­nam hav­ing a bet­ter chance of sur­viv­ing one tour of duty than a kid has to reach­ing 21 in Watts, Los Angeles.”

But even if the film’s poster end­ed up being toned down, Men­ace II Society’s mes­sage of hor­ror still fil­tered through to audi­ences. As Williams con­cludes, ​“I remem­ber going to Block­buster and some­one put a VHS tape of Men­ace II Soci­ety in the hor­ror sec­tion. Hon­est­ly, that felt like praise to me as Men­ace was an authen­tic por­trait of the dark­est days of our lives. It gave a voice to our horror.”