Has John Wick replaced Scarface as hip hop’s… | Little White Lies

Film Music

Has John Wick replaced Scar­face as hip hop’s favourite film?

18 Apr 2018

Words by Jack Kavanagh

A woman in a black suit pointing a gun in a dimly lit room, with a golden object on the floor.
A woman in a black suit pointing a gun in a dimly lit room, with a golden object on the floor.
Keanu Reeves’ no-non­sense anti-hero has struck a chord with a new gen­er­a­tion of rappers.

There’s been a recent wave of icon­o­clasm in rap music, an inevitable shift as a rel­a­tive­ly young genre matures. Tupac Shakur has come under fire from the likes of Lil Xan, who has described the rap icon’s music as bor­ing’. This new gen­er­a­tion of artists have grown up with dif­fer­ent role mod­els, and cul­tur­al touch­stones such as Scar­face now appear to be los­ing their influence.

Bri­an De Palma’s 1983 film fol­lows Tony Montana’s vio­lent jour­ney from pen­ni­less Cuban immi­grant to mil­lion­aire cocaine king­pin. Con­sid­er­ing that many black Amer­i­cans can relate to grow­ing up mar­gin­alised and poor, it’s not hard to see why Montana’s sin­gle-mind­ed pur­suit of the Amer­i­can Dream res­onat­ed with so many rap­pers from hip hop’s gold­en age.

An entire book could be writ­ten about Scarface’s impact on hip hop cul­ture; there are at least three con­tem­po­rary artists whose rap names derive from the film – French Mon­tana, Chief Keef aka Sosa and Brad Scar­face” Jordan.

The mythol­o­gy sur­round­ing Scar­face peaked with the emer­gence of Mafioso Rap in the mid-’90s; through­out the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion Pacino’s char­ac­ter was con­sis­tent­ly ref­er­enced in rap music more often than the pres­i­dent. Sub-genre defin­ing projects such as Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx’ are lit­tered with vocal sam­ples, while Jay‑Z famous­ly once jibed, Scar­face the movie did more than Scar­face the rap­per to me”.

Street rap­pers talk of the life lessons buried with­in in the film’s 170-minute run­time. Both The Noto­ri­ous BIG and NWA-era Ice Cube have songs which remind lis­ten­ers of the famous max­im: Don’t get high on your own supply’.

Scarface’s influ­ence has waned in recent years, how­ev­er, and now John Wick seems to be the new vogue for hip hop, ful­fill­ing as it does a vio­lent niche. Keanu Reeves plays the tit­u­lar anti­hero who embarks on a mur­der­ous gun-fu ram­page after a group of mob­sters raid his home and kill his dog. The thrilling action-set pieces and seem­ing­ly inde­struc­tible pro­tag­o­nist makes the film a nat­ur­al suc­ces­sor to De Palma’s bloody crime epic.

John Wick was a slow burn hit at the US box office, exceed­ing ini­tial com­mer­cial expec­ta­tions. At the time of writ­ing, a tele­vi­sion series and third movie are in the works. The film’s impact on hip hop cul­ture was instant­ly felt and has only grown in the years since its release (it’s worth not­ing that Chica­go rap­per-actor Com­mon played a promi­nent role in the 2017 sequel). In 2015, the hip hop trio Migos released John Wick’, in which each mem­ber raps in char­ac­ter – All black, one gun­man / John Wick, that’s a bad man”, drawls Qua­vo in the chorus.

John Wick is com­mon­ly cit­ed as a short­hand for retal­i­a­tion or ret­ri­bu­tion: John Wick, I don’t leave any wit­ness­es,” says Brockhampton’s Dom McLen­non, while Fat Joe raps, I got my car back, I’m John Wick”, on the DJ Khalid track Bil­ly Ocean’. Rap­pers are even start­ing to name them­selves after the film, with Sniper Gang affil­i­ate John Wicks cur­rent­ly mak­ing a name him­self in South Florida’s buzzing rap scene.

Accord­ing to Rap Genius, ref­er­ences to John Wick in rap music have increased incre­men­tal­ly since 2014. Last year 0.0005 per cent of all rap songs men­tioned John Wick, and as the fran­chise con­tin­ues to expand it looks as though Keanu Reeves’ char­ac­ter will even­tu­al­ly sup­plant Tony Mon­tana as hip hop’s pre­em­i­nent anti-hero.

Jack Kavanagh is the edi­tor of Cul­ture Hash, a blog on pop­u­lar cul­ture and music.

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