Written and directed by Carlton Wade and Andre Stephens, The Takeover is a documentary that explains how the South has, according to the filmmakers, become the leader of the Hip Hop culture.
“As the ’80s was creeping into the ’90s, the East Coast started to slowly loose its monopoly on HipHop to the West, and with West Coast acts like N.W.A, Ice T, Tupac and Snoop Dogg were on top of the game, the South was just a blip on the national radar,” the film’s narrator says. “But today, things done changed. Not only is the South on the radar, but now the region that was an underdog is the barometer for rap music and HipHop culture.”
Produced by Andre “Jack Frost” Stephens and Carlton Wade, the 95-minute documentary revisits several pivotal moments in the formation of the South’s Rap scene, including the 1989 incident when the 2 Live Crew was arrested for performing its sexually explicit song “Me So Horny” in public.
The narrator Andre Stephens says that in 1987, before 2 Live Crew’s arrest, a store clerk was charged with a felony for selling its debut album to a 14-year-old girl. In ’88, a store clerk in Alabama was fined for selling their single “Move Something” to an undercover cop. Both acts were deemed perverse and, thus, illegal.
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“We didn’t really know how to approach it because we was just making music,” says 2 Live Crew member Fresh Kid Ice in The Takeover. “It was scary because we didn’t know how to perceive [charges, fines and arrests] at the time.”
The Takeover is available for purchase on Amazon, Google Play, VUDU and Xbox. The deluxe version of The Takeover, which is set to include the soundtrack, bonus footage and exclusive interviews in addition to the documentary, is scheduled to premiere on iTunes October 1.
