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The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)
1978 | Action, Adventure, Drama
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"The second film that I suggest is called The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, also called The Master Killer. This film moved me so much not only from the martial arts action and the philosophy of Buddhism that was instilled in the movie, but also the overcoming of oppression. Growing up, I knew that I was being oppressed; I knew the black man’s struggle was oppressive in America, you know, reading Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. I knew of our struggle. But I didn’t know that that struggle was all around the world. I didn’t know that struggle was in all time periods. And when I saw this movie, it resonated with me in a way that I was like, “Wow, the government is just oppressing them, coming in and taking their homes, destroying their property. How they gonna win?” And from a single word, which was “Shaolin,” our hero was able to go find himself and find the way to help bring the end to that oppression."

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It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy
1988 | Rock
8.0 (3 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I got to love this album when I was 18, working in a second hand clothes shop in Glasgow, where one of the guys I worked with played it constantly. It was the first time I had heard music that felt like genuine contemporary protest music. The combination of Chuck D’s informed eloquence and unashamed confrontational stance was so potent. Here was a guy name-checking Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the same breath as Coltrane and Anthrax. It was revolutionary in every sense. It felt dangerous. These guys had the FBI tapping their phones and were taking on the behemoth of the US establishment. While in retrospect the S1Ws may be the campest paramilitaries in history, the imagery of guerrilla conflict intensified the sense of resisting persecution. Like the best groups, it felt like a gang, too. Flav the joker, Chuck the boss, Terminator-X voiceless, but ever-present. Tight. Then there was the music. That fragmented repetition. Those bursts of brass and breakbeats, squealing like sirens against stolen guitars. Amazing. It didn’t sound like anything else. While Chuck D and his cartoon foil Flavor Flav had the lyrical articulacy, Terminator-X, Professor Griff and the Bomb Squad matched it musically. Their imagination was in context – how to take something from its original context, place it against something else out of context to create something way more powerful than either in isolation. In many ways, I still see this LP as the pinnacle of rap. Of course it is of its time and sonic trends advanced, but for sheer inventiveness and lyricism it has never been matched. It felt like rap was violently booting the world into a better direction – a brief flash of genius before it became mired in the vocabulary of egoism, misogyny and avarice. There have been great pinnacles since, but nothing matches this moment."

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