‘Young black men are not sta­tis­tics’ – Rap­man on redefin­ing the hood movie

Films and TV shows about inner-city life can often feel forced and inau­then­tic, but watch­ing Blue Sto­ry, the debut fea­ture from Rap­man, it’s clear that a lot of time and effort has gone into mak­ing it as accu­rate as pos­si­ble. This is not just anoth­er outsider’s watered down ver­sion of what being young, black and work­ing class in Lon­don looks like.

Dur­ing an ener­getic par­ty scene, which trans­forms a sub­ur­ban house in leafy North Lon­don into a row­dy noc­tur­nal gath­er­ing for school kids, we see joint butts in red cups and dusty CD copies of rap clas­sics like Jay‑Z’s ​‘Rea­son­able Doubt’ and Snoop Dogg’s ​‘Dog­gystyle’ con­spic­u­ous­ly placed on kitchen coun­ters. Amid all the noise there’s a sense of ris­ing ten­sion in the air which sug­gests a fight could break out at any second.

For Rap­man, who first rose to fame in the UK as an emcee, it was impor­tant that Blue Sto­ry didn’t present a syn­thet­ic account of life in the ends. Instead, he says he want­ed every sequence to have a ​“sweaty, para­noid” feel to tru­ly reflect the real­i­ty he expe­ri­enced grow­ing up in Dept­ford with ​“one hand in the streets”.

He tells LWLies: ​“We shot at my old school; my son has a small role; the kids play­ing the Ghet­to Boys are all real gang mem­bers… This is 100 per cent real. Noth­ing is sug­ar coat­ed. You’re see­ing things that hap­pen every day. In a lot of hood movies you just see peo­ple get shot and die, but you don’t see the after­math. It’s the same in the media, and it’s the rea­son why these kids who get stabbed feel more like sta­tis­tics than human beings. I want this to be the total oppo­site. Some­one might watch this film who goes to Eton and it will change the way they look at our world.”

The rap­per-turned-direc­tor made waves after his YouTube series Shiro’s Sto­ry, which presents London’s inner cities as a kind of war­zone, went viral. Rap­man wrote, direct­ed and also nar­rat­ed the series via sto­ry­telling raps as action sequences with actors played out. This fresh approach to telling black sto­ries struck a chord with audi­ences and crit­ics, pro­pelling Rap­man from the under­ground rap scene to being signed to Jay‑Z’s man­age­ment com­pa­ny, Roc Nation, and work­ing with Para­mount and BBC Films.

It’s fair to say that Blue Sto­ry, a tale of two best friends, Tim­my (Stephen Odubo­la) and Mar­co (Micheal Ward), who become dead­ly ene­mies after get­ting caught up in the capital’s much-pub­li­cised post­code wars, retreads a lot of old ground from Shiro’s Sto­ry. The film is sim­i­lar­ly a lit­tle rough around the edges, but it is under­pinned by a more clear and cohe­sive social message.

“All you see right now in the media is head­lines about stab­bing, stab­bing and stab­bing,” explains Rap­man, ​“but you nev­er see how it got to the point where vio­lence was the only option. We show how things get to that boil­ing point from ado­les­cence right through to adult­hood. If the world can see how the kids get to that stage then maybe it can learn how to inter­vene much earlier.”

There are no win­ners in Blue Sto­ry. The world it depicts is filled with young men who are pre­pared to die over a play­ground dis­pute if it means not show­ing weak­ness. As you watch teenagers bleed out on the pave­ment, you’re remind­ed of sem­i­nal black films such as Men­ace II Soci­ety and Juice which unflinch­ing­ly and vis­cer­al­ly show how tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty turns young black men against each other.

Like those films, Blue Sto­ry is far from per­fect. For starters, its sidelin­ing of female char­ac­ter amid all the hood pol­i­tics feels regres­sive next to some­thing like Neftflix’s Top Boy revival, a show where women con­sis­tent­ly dis­play more sense than their male coun­ter­parts. The rap nar­ra­tion can some­times feel a lit­tle gim­micky too.

Yet it remains com­pelling for the most part, with Rap­man putting a unique mod­ern twist on famil­iar Shake­speare­an themes such as love, fam­i­ly and betray­al: “‘Romeo and Juli­et’ but with two best friends in the ghet­to,” as he puts it.

Beyond his own jour­ney, Rap­man hopes that Blue Sto­ry will inspire oth­er work­ing class black men to become film­mak­ers too. ​“I want to be the black Spiel­berg. I want to bang the door down. If this film does well then the door will be flung open and oth­er young black film­mak­ers can tell their sto­ries too. Peo­ple can only learn about why knife crime is ris­ing if the peo­ple from that world show you how it is. This is about re-address­ing that balance.”

Blue Sto­ry is released 22 November.