Movies: Was King of New York the 1st Gangsta Rap Movie?

-Little White Lies

When Bronx-born director Abel Ferrara’s King of New York premiered at the 1990 New York Film Festival, the first reporter to ask a question after the screening barked: “This film is an abomination. Why aren’t you giving the proceeds to some drug rehab program?” Such was the outrage among the audience that night that screenwriter Nicholas St John was booed off the stage.

Yet while critics refused to embrace the brutal gangster film, which glamorises the rise of drug lord Frank White (played with Shakespearean swagger by Christopher Walken), the hip hop community welcomed it with open arms, enshrining it as a cult classic. In White, a character that spreads philanthropy and violence in equal measure, here was a figure who seemed to perfectly encapsulate gangster rap’s many contradictions. When The Notorious B.I.G. started referring to himself as the ‘Black Frank White’ in verses, the film gained a reverence in hip hop circles comparable to Brian De Palma’s Scarface.

Some of the film’s rap culture metaphors are intentional, according to Joe Delia, who created the music for the film. “Abel was completely in tune with how hip hop was impacting New York,” he explains. “He always loved Bob Dylan and was seeing the same kind of poetry and social commentary coming out of the mouths of rappers.” Subsequently, Ferrara, who has also directed gritty independent films such as Driller Killer and Bad Lieutenant, struck up a friendship with New York rapper Schoolly D, a man Ice-T once credited as being the first gangster rapper.

During the film’s climatic nightclub shootout, White nods his head to Schoolly D’s jazz-enthused street anthem ‘Am I Black Enough For You?’, a song which contains the defiant declaration, “All’s I need is my blackness, some others seem to lack this.” According to Delia, who reveals that Ferrara wanted natural sound throughout the film in order to capture the “griminess of New York,” Walken picked up a lot of mannerisms from Schoolly D, which in turn created an authenticity. “Chris already had this incredible movement and motion, but subtle things such as the hip hop dance he does early on in the film were possibly inspired by Schoolly visiting the set,” he reveals.

The King of New York is acknowledged as one of the first examples of hood cinema, with its hip hop-heavy soundtrack and visual style setting the tone for subsequent genre touchstones like Boyz n the Hood. Yet the film’s legacy is perhaps best gauged in relation to its impact on hip hop culture’s competiveness. When The Notorious B.I.G. rapped, “Choppin rocks overnight / The nigga Biggie Smalls tryin’ ta turn into the black Frank White!” it created a situation where the portly rapper had to embrace the role of rap’s King of New York figure. And after Biggie’s death in March 1997, other New York rappers such as Jay-Z and Nas jostled for this title via a series of vicious battle raps.

Whether intentional or not, the character of Frank White became a beacon for lyrical supremacy among the east coast’s elite rappers. To them, the power, money and respect that came with becoming the ‘King of New York’ meant absolutely everything.