Portable Film Festival

Film Details

Director: Micah Meisner Duration: 00:03:42 Year: 2008 Created at: Canada Festival Year: 2008

Brief

It's true that I didn't go to a high school where krumping or clowning was openly encouraged. And I might have cut class on the days my teacher used turntables to mash up the subtleties of Year 10 trigonometry. But then, it seems like K-OS may have enrolled in the kind of Senior High where street tactics got school awards, rather than spear tackling, latin recitals and the lovable pushiness of soccer mums.

Moving against school and street spaces through a high school year book, Micah Meisner's clip for K-OS is an accomplished piece of urban splicing that applies the points of hip hop and street culture (skating dance, dj-ing) in celebratory fashion against the cold halls of a public school and the warm streets of the suburbs. It's a refreshing, dynamic movement through hip hop forms, with none of the self-aggrandising that keeps the majority of mainstream rap videos snuggled tightly between low-level porn and a Mercedes commercial.

And Trinidad-born, Toronto-bred MC K-OS is on the up: having recently supported India.Arie and Floetry, K-OS is showing that Prince, curiously enough, isn't the only funk-lovin' Jehovah's witness upsetting the charts; delivering the kind of creative flow that doesn't talk down to those inclined to listen, K-OS joins the likes of Lupe Fiasco in making a thoroughly modern hip hop happening.

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