DVD REVIEWS

Dirty States of America, both educational and entertaining, is essentially a collection of interviews and footage pieced together to tell the comprehensive history of Southern music culture. The clips are organized in a fast-paced, attention-grabbing manner, and even though the DVD is ninety minutes long, there’s no time wasted. Producer/director FLX uses a simple yet effective layout which clearly shows who’s speaking, where they’re from, and tiles of other relevant clips. Throughout the DVD, we travel state-by-state, exploring the origins of each region’s music. We begin in Memphis with the "gangsta walk," where Select-O-Hits’ J-Dawg illustrates the walk for amusement purposes. Moving into Florida, FLX emphasizes the importance of bass music pioneers like Uncle Luke, Magic Mike, and Jam Pony Express. Khia, known for cursing out program directors, expresses her priceless opinion on corporate radio. Of course, you can’t talk about bass music without plenty of ass-shaking footage. We’ve all seen those amateur Spring Break DVDs, but at least in this case the ass-shaking footage is relevant to the subject matter. However - the slowed-down sequence of a rather large woman dancing naked to a Mike Jones song - I really did not need to see that. Anyway, moving into the Texas segment on screwed & chopped music, FLX again does an excellent job of capturing the true influence that DJ Screw, the Geto Boys, and UGK have had on Southern music. PaulWall defines "drank, syrup, lean," while other Texas artists like Lil’ Flip, Slim Thug, and Chamillionaire throw in their two cents. The Atlanta segment focuses on underground favorites like Sammy Sam as well as the "King of Crunk," Lil’ Jon and co. The crunk segment naturally features some great live performance footage (David Banner throwing chairs Jerry Springer-style; Bonecrusher and Killer Mike poppin’ bottles and drenching the audience). Lil’ Scrappy and Trillville’s acapella rendition of "Neva Eva" is the most visually entertaining footage on the DVD. Moving into Mississippi, FLX touches on the KKK, the civil rights movement, and the influence of slavery on Southern culture as a whole. Finally, we explore the jazz elements of New Orleans’ bounce music.

I don’t like to knock anybody’s hustle, but with this Cornbread Street Heat DVD Magazine, I’ve got to be honest. Everything - the film quality, the "interviews," the menu layout - is sloppy. From the cover, it appears to have some potential, promising "real videos, real concerts, real interviews, real fights" along with appearances by "Twista, Alicia Keys, Lil’ Flip, Mike Jones, David Banner, Too Short, Big Tymers, YoungBloodz, T.I." and more. But, I was apprehensive once I popped in the DVD, since it had a hand-written title on a CompUSA DVD. The menu is extremely plain and boring, with only five options. There’s no way to skip from one "interview" or "concert" to the next, so it’s possible that there was some interesting content on here that I couldn’t figure out how to get to. From what I saw of the "real concerts," it was basically just really bad footage of crowds of people. Most of the "live interviews" are actually just drops. Also, when you first click on the menu options, you have to watch an entire music video before getting to the actual "content." The music videos - from artists like D.S.R. and Roscoe - are actually the highlights of the DVD, but it’s irritating to have to sit through a whole video without being able to skip forward. If you’re gonna put out a product, don’t put out a half-ass product. It irritates those of us who take pride in our work. - Julia Beverly, jb@ozonemag.com

Here we have the sixth installment of All Access: the DVD Magazine, the "Southern" edition. From the beginning, this DVD has quality cover graphics and an easy-to-navigate menu. We start off in Atlanta, where the always entertaining Hot 107 radio host Coco Brother attempts to get some dirt out of Timbaland. Coco tries to find out how much Timbaland hates Jermaine Dupri, if the chemistry with Missy Elliott extends from the studio to the bedroom, and how much he charges for a beat. Timb drops a few soundbites ("If I brought Lil’ Kim back, I could bring anybody back," when asked about Bubba Sparxxx) and even gets uncharacteristically heated when discussing radio politics. Next, All Access stops by David Banner’s tour bus en route to Lil’ Jon’s platinum party in NYC. Banner employs his signature all-up-in-the-camera interview style to express some backstage thoughts on his three favorite subjects: Mississippi, God, and titties. Lil’ Jon, Bonecrusher, the Ying Yang Twins, and a few others make cameo appearances.

Other features include car segments called "parkin’ lot pimpin’" and a model search for Apple Bottom jeans. It’s clear that this DVD is directed towards men, because there’s plenty of gratuitous ass shots. The camera man seems to have a difficult time keeping the lens on Jacki-O’s face while she’s being interviewed, but we do get plenty of closeup shots of the rest of her body. There’s also a lot more eye candy for the guys during the feature interview with Uncle Luke: slow-mo shots of a girl with two tongue rings, staircase up-the-girls’-skirts footage, and of course, plenty of strip club action. The segment is titled "48 Hours with Uncle Luke." I’m not sure if this title is completely accurate, but nonetheless, the drawback to having 48 hours of footage is that it moves at a rather slow pace. There are a few scenes (Uncle Luke hocking a loogie out of his car window on I-95, Uncle Luke and Disco Rick walking down a hallway, Uncle Luke walking down the stairs) that seem slow and unnecessary. Sometimes questions are posed as text and flash slowly across the screen, which is lengthy and distracting. After the slow radio station sequence with Tigger, Avant, and Loon, however, Luke gets more comfortable with the camera and things start to get really interesting. Inside the comfort of his own home, Luke proclaims that R Kelly will become "a hero," but notes, "I’m not eating no stray bitch’s ass [like R Kelly did on that video tape]. That’s not clean." After smashing his pimp cup against a wall, he has a few choice words for Snoop Dogg. "I don’t need no nigga to give me no glass to put me in the pussy game. This is real pimpin’. All them niggas with those cups need to listen to my album real close. You do not get a cup and turn into a fuckin’ pimp overnight. Don Juan is still pimpin’: he’s pimpin’ them rap niggas. Now that’s deep, y’all. He started by pimpin’ hoes, now he’s pimpin’ them rap niggas. They the new hoes."