20th Anniversary Screening!
There’s something about Hustle & Flow that sticks to you like summer heat. The air feels thick, the stakes feel high, and the dream—always just out of reach—burns hot enough to drive a man past his limits. This July, The Black Nerds are bringing Craig Brewer’s 2005 classic back to the big screen at Revue Cinema, right when Toronto's enters its own kind of heatwave. It’s the perfect climate for a film that became a time capsule of early 2000s Memphis, a musical turning point, and a cinematic blueprint for chasing greatness from nothing.
Set in a city where everything seems to be collapsing inward, Hustle & Flow introduces us to DJay (played with gut-wrenching nuance by Terrence Howard), a small-time hustler with a faded dream and a worn-out hustle. Life has boxed him in—a trap house, a few girls working the strip, a busted old keyboard. But when a chance encounter with a church buddy-turned-sound engineer (Anthony Anderson) opens a door, DJay starts building something radical: a homegrown rap demo, laid down in the sweatbox heat of a DIY studio inside his house. With the support of his makeshift family—most notably Shug, played with quiet, soul-deep brilliance by Taraji P. Henson—DJay dares to believe he’s more than what the world has offered him.
But for all its grit and glory, Hustle & Flow doesn’t shy away from complicated questions—particularly when it comes to the politics of sex work and the figure of the pimp. DJay is not a monster, nor is he a hero. He’s a “nice pimp” by cinematic standards, and that’s where the discomfort and complexity lie. The film walks a precarious line—some argue it softens the reality of pimping, stripping it of its violence and exploitation. Others suggest the film is more interested in excavating DJay’s contradictions, not to absolve him, but to reveal how capitalism creates its own kind of beast. When DJay talks about control—over women, over his music, over his destiny—it’s clear the lines between the rap game and the pimp game aren’t just parallel; they’re entangled.
The women in DJay’s world, particularly Shug and Nola (played by Taryn Manning), exist within this fraught ecosystem. The film attempts, sometimes haltingly, to show their agency while still implicating the oppressive structure they’re trying to survive. Whether it succeeds or not is open to interpretation—but what Hustle & Flow undeniably captures is the desperation and resilience of people making choices in a world with few real options.
And then there’s the music. With It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp, Three 6 Mafia took home an Oscar for Best Original Song—becoming the first hip hop group to do so, and forever linking the film to a moment of unexpected, historic visibility for Southern rap. It helped usher trap music into the mainstream, giving Memphis its due and turning a DIY dream into industry recognition.
Viewed in hindsight, Hustle & Flow feels like a multiverse prequel: the raw beginnings of the empire we’d later watch unfold in Empire, where Howard and Henson would reunite as hip hop royalty. But here, their story is still stuck in the mud, still clawing upward, still betting everything on a sound.
Hustle & Flow wasn’t supposed to make it. Neither was DJay. That’s the point. It’s a film about what happens when you don’t wait for permission—when you risk everything to be heard, and in doing so, expose not only yourself, but the flawed systems around you. It’s hot, it’s loud, it’s messy—and it’s one hell of a ride.
Catch Hustle & Flow with The Black Nerds on July 24th at Revue Cinema, mayne!
-Faduma Gure
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