As there seems to be no way to avoid saying, this is a This Is Spinal Tap for rap. The different musical form ensures a degree of difference, of course; and, as with the heavy metal of the earlier movie, detesters of such music will find no less to enjoy, and maybe more, than its embracers. (It isn't so much like the genuine article as to qualify as an instrument of torture. At any rate it doesn't go on so long. At any rate it isn't so loud.) The names alone (the group as a whole: N.W.H., short for Niggaz With Hats; the individual members: Ice Cold, Tone Def, Tasty Taste; their songs: "My Peanuts," "Guerrillas in the Midst") are highly rewarding. The movie, however, gets into difficulty when it gets off the drawing board. The caricaturism of Rusty Cundieff (who also wrote and directed), Mark Christopher Lawrence, and Larry B. Scott is heavy of touch, and the comic invention is spotty and sputtery, and the overall format of a documentary filmmaker (Kasi Lemmons) following the group on tour never allows the movie to escape the leash of the copycat. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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