"Fear of a Black Hat," the rap mockumentary that today seems just as prophetic as it was satirical, is now on DVD. It's been 25 years since its genesis in the South Bronx, and still hip-hop remains a mystery to Hollywood. Despite the influx of rapper-actors like Ice Cube, Method Man and Queen Latifah, film representations of hip-hop tend toward the clichéd. They have only rarely gotten beyond the spate of super-amateur mid-80's films - "Wild Style," "Beat Street," "Krush Groove" - that aimed to translate the nascent street phenomenon for the masses. Attempts at hip-hop parody have proved particularly futile, a fact made all the more egregious by the existence of a Hollywood film that, nearly a decade ago, got it very right. "Fear of a Black Hat," from the novice writer and director Rusty Cundieff, was "This Is Spinal Tap" for the hip-hop generation - a loving, knowing poke at the genre's sanctimony that only someone with intimate access could have pulled off. Developed at roughly the same time as Chris Rock's limp "CB4," Mr. Cundieff's film chronicles in mockumentary style the creation, success, implosion and ultimate redemption of the fictional hip-hop group N.W.H. (Niggaz Wit Hats). Its members are political gangsters with juvenile ideologies ("Back in the days when there was slaves and stuff, they would work in the hot sun all day, with the sun beating down on them, hatless. By the time they got back to the plantation, from being in all the heat, they was too tired to rebel against they masters") and absurd names (Ice Cold, Tasty Taste, Tone Def) that played off the lingo of the day. Watching "Black Hat" today is like replaying the history of hip-hop on fast forward .... read full NY Times article