MTV Is Dead: Boyz N the Hood's 25th Anniversary

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Boyz N the Hood's 25th Anniversary

by Ran Britt

25 years ago, the world was a very different place. Hip-Hop was alive and well, OJ Simpson was thought of as a hero, guys didn't wear tight pants, Ice Cube was scary to white America and ghetto violence was Southern California’s best-kept secret. However, in the summer of 1991, then-20 year old first time director John Singleton brought urban violence and California hood culture to the mainstream. The recent USC film school grad gave big screen visuals to the gritty tales heard on “gangsta rap” cd's and tapes (remember it was ’91) and brought the west coast inner-city to suburban moviegoers all across the country.

That’s not to say that Singleton was the first to expose the problems in the hood. After all, the film is heavily influenced by NWA (who director Singleton had envisioned appearing in the film). Hell, the title itself, including its phonetic spelling, is an allusion to an Eazy-E song. Boyz N The Hood is not even the first film to explore the other side of Cali on-screen. However, two and a half decades ago this summer and less than a year before the L.A. riots, Boyz N The Hood was the first and one of the best in what is dismissively referred to as the “hood movie” film genre.

Boyz N The Hood has left an enormous impact on the landscape of pop culture. The film spawned an entire movie genre, which in turn led to a resurgence in African-American cinema itself. While the rise of west coast hip-hop in the early 1990's is due to NWA and their contempararies, it's near complete saturation of radio stations and video channels is at least indirectly a result of Boyz's crossover success. Incidentally, the movie features Ice Cube in his first and arguably his best cinematic performance. Fourteen years after the movie's release Young Jeezy's first group (Boyz N Da Hood of course) even took its name from the movie.

Boyz N The Hood is still a good recommendation for anyone who hasn't seen it. Boyz received not one but two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the time of it's release. Eleven years later, in 2002, the movie was selected for membership in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for it's "cultural significance".