DEATH OF A DYNASTY BY CHRIS NELSON

I’m not entirely sure why rappers are still making movies. Not only has the game been over for a good decade now (Who’s the Man? won, if you’re keeping score at home) but it seems pretty obvious at this point that any film made to be hip pro tempore will be subject to hindsighted ridicule a few years later. Today’s Hustle & Flow is tomorrow’s Breakin’, and that’s what makes Death of a Dynasty’s existence so puzzling: why is (now former) Roc-A-Fella CEO Dame Dash willing to make an ass of himself for a straight-to-DVD release about Roc-A-Fella, the label he ran with Jay-Z? Especially since there’s little chance of a financial boon? To answer that would involve spoiling Death’s twist ending, so suffice to say that the film amounts to little more than a feature-length Roc-A-Fella press release sponsored by Rocawear. Sure, it’s mildly funny — especially Run DMC’s nursing-home cameo, which redefines " old school " — but if I wanted to see rappers hocking shit, I’d turn on BET. At least they don’t talk over the music.