Word: platinum
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...Platinum (UPN, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.; previews Monday, April 14, 9 p.m. E.T.) accomplishes nothing else, it shows that the hip-hop record business has all these milieus beat: people shoot, get shot, squabble over contracts and end up in the hospital! Straight-arrow Jackson Rhames (Jason George) and his streetwise brother Grady (Sticky Fingaz) have a dream job--running the independent record label Sweetback--but they also have a few problems. Their top act, an Eminem-like white rapper, is a thug, and his last record tanked. If they poach a rival label's star, it could start...
Except for cable series like Showtime's Soul Food, TV is averse to dramas that star African Americans. Even UPN, with its stable of "urban" comedies, mostly populates its dramas with white folk and the occasional Vulcan. Platinum would be notable simply for its casting, but its blackness goes deeper. Writer and co-creator John Ridley (Three Kings) has produced a story about the ascendancy of black pop culture in America, not only among black people, and the ironies that result when the art of the dispossessed goes mainstream. Ridley, who is black, is fascinated by the world...
...beats are digital icing—finely groomed and processed gems that remind listeners that, despite its faults, radio hip-hop has consistently pushed sonic boundaries. “Platinum BlaQue Party” employs shaker, hi-hat and triangle samples straight from a Missy Elliott chart-topper, along with a creamy-wet, futuristic synth. The lyrics imitate radio-hop’s vapid babble but exaggerate it even further, laying bare its superficiality. “I got so much access to excess,” they croon, “words cannot describe my success...
...rebellion to upper crust complacency. On “Fader Party” the Majesticons play defiant street rappers as they “count the funds / count my guns / count my sons / count my clout / count you out.” But by the time “Platinum BlaQue” arrives, they’ve begun to assimilate: “New Republic on the table with the New York Times / Used to read The Nation ’til I changed my mind / Used to study Marx; now I study wine.” Then come...
...Dark Man X, n?e Earl Simmons) has a few platinum CDs, including It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, and a tattoo on his back that elegizes his pet dog. Here he plays Tony Fate, a gentleman thief whose latest heist, a handful of black diamonds, gets him in trouble with some mean malefactors (Hawaii-born Mark Dacascos and Kelly Hu). The black diamonds turn out to be plutonium pellets that could Destroy the World. DMX has charisma enough for the job, performing tough scenes and teary ones with equal facility...