Great segments on old school hip hop

This documentary maybe have covered the birth of hip hop better than any other documentary on the same subject. Most documentaries just drop the names Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa in the same sentence and call it a day. This went into how their styles are different and why the styles are different. It also examined how rapping came about in an in-depth way I don't think I've seen before. I don't think other documentaries mentioned Frankie Crocker as an influence before.

Previous documentaries I've seen have also been very polite to The Sugarhill Gang considering they were The Monkees of hip hop. I'm glad they kept it real and let the founding fathers speak freely about them. I'm especially glad that they spoke about how Big Bank Hank stole Grandmaster Caz's rhymes.

I appreciated how the documentary showed how Grandmaster Flash innovated DJing. We got to see him demonstrate how he'd mark the records with crayon which I don't think I've seen in a hip hop documentary.

Unfortunately this documentary made the same mistakes that most hip hop documentaries made: They couldn't wait to get from the "old school" era to the "gangsta rap" era. I don't think one episode was enough to cover the "Golden Age" of hip hop. Where was KRS-One during this entire documentary? He's like the unofficial historian of Hip Hop. We saw clips of him thrown in but no mention of BDP. No mention of Slick Rick or Doug E. Fresh either.

I'd really love to see the "Golden Age" of hip hop get its own documentary. A lot of evolving happened between "The Message" and "Straight Outta Compton." I would love to see the "G-Funk Era" get its own episode too.

An enjoyable mini-series nonetheless. I gave it 4/5 stars on Netflix.