4.D.garden*

This Is The Life – How The West Was One

This Is The Life

Winner! Best Documentary Audience Award
Pan-African Film Festival 2008

Winner! Audience Award, Documentary
ReelWorld Film Festival 2008

Winner! Audience Award, First Place
Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival 2008

In 1989, a collective of young artists gathered weekly at a small health food store in South Central LA called “The Good Life.” Their mandate? To explore and expand the musical boundaries of hip hop.

THIS IS THE LIFE tells the little known story of a group of teenagers, who revolutionized hip hop by innovating the very rhyme patterns, melodic concepts and lyrical styles used by many of today’s biggest rap stars.

While their innovations have yielded billions of dollars for the recording industry, the Good Life emcees have toiled in relative obscurity in the United States. But much like their jazz heroes of a bygone era, these street poets have garnered a rabid and musically sophisticated fan base abroad, with a cult-like following in Germany, Australia, France, England and Japan.

This feature-length documentary, directed by former Good Life emcee Ava DuVernay, chronicles the rise and fall of an unusual family of artists, while examining their obstacles to commercial success. They all took different paths, but remain connected by the music they made, the alternative hip hop movement they developed, and their worldwide influence on the art form.

“A Must-See For Hip Hop Fans”