Hip-Hop Final Essay:

CB4

Andrew Knox

HUM 125: Hip-Hop Theory and Culture

Dr. Daudi Abe, Seattle Central Community College

December 4th, 2010

Third Draft
Andrew Knox
HUM 125 – Final Essay
December 4th, 2010

SECTION 1: Introduction

CB4 (short for “Cell Block 4”) is both a parody and warm reflection on late 80's/early 90's hip

hop music and culture. CB4 tells the story of Albert Brown (Chris Rock), a middle-class young black

male living in the fictional town of Locash, California, and his friends Otis Jackson (Deezer D) and

Euripides Smalls (Allen Payne) as they work towards becoming successful rap stars.1 Albert's family

and his girlfriend, Daliha (Rachel True), simply don't understand his taste in Gangsta Rap music,

instead preferring the dance stylings of hip-hop entertainer Wacky D (a send-up of MC Hammer).2 Otis,

once described as “the coolest virgin ever,” lives with his mother and five younger sisters. He is

depicted as a caring and helpful older brother, promising to things for or with each sister every night.

Euripides, also known as “Rip,” “came from a broken home, which meant he had to hustle for every

dollar he made.” At the start of the story, Rip works dispassionately for a gay sex phone line.

The three idolize Run-DMC, role-playing the group and lip-synching along to “King of Rock”

while driving around town so often that Albert's tape has become damaged, slowing down and speeding

up at random intervals for comedic effect.3 The three friends already consider themselves a rap group,

but they have yet to cement their creative identity. At open mics at the local venue, Gusto's, they try

several gimmick identities, such as The Mad Bohemians, The BagHeads, and finally, The Overweight

Lovers (a parody of The Fat Boys). None of these ideas catch on with the audience, but the group

perseveres. In this time they meet Trustus Jones (Willard E. Pugh), a record company executive, Sissy

(Khandi Alexander), a collector of sex experiences and embarrassing photos of various rap stars, and

Baa Baa Ack (Richard Gant), a “Back-to-Africa” black nationalist whose philosophy intrigues Rip.

1 Rotten Tomatoes.
2 Davis, 12:00 – 14:00.
3 Davis, 18:22 – 19:45.

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They also meet club owner, Gusto (Charlie Murphy), an easily-angered gangster who eventually

becomes the film's primary antagonist. Gusto throws the three friends out of his club after becoming

(inadvertently) insulted by Albert's request that their group be allowed to be Wacky D's opening act.

After being offered a record contract by Trustus Jones if they can get their image together, the

three decide that Albert must apologize to Gusto so that they may continue to play gigs at the only hip-

hop venue in town. The next day, as Gusto is in the middle of a cocaine deal, Albert comes to

apologize, unaware of an impending police raid on the club. As soon as Gusto's right-hand man, 40

Dog, lets Albert in, the police burst in, arresting everyone involved in the drug deal except Albert. In

the midst of the circumstances, Gusto believes that Albert set him up, and vows to get revenge. As the

police haul Gusto away, Albert realizes that using Gusto's persona and adapting it to his group is one

path to success. One arresting detective mentions that “Cell Block 4 is waiting for [Gusto].”After

discussing the idea with Rip and Otis, the three sign a contract with In Jones We Trust Productions as

CB4, with Albert, Rip and Otis taking on the stage names MC Gusto, Dead Mike and DJ Stab Master

Arson respectively.4

The group hits it big with their singles, “Straight Outta Locash,” a direct parody of “Straight

Outta Compton” by N.W.A., and “Sweat Of My Balls,” a parody of “Talk Like Sex” by Kool G Rap.

The rest of the film regards the group's struggles with fame, the contrast between their gangsta image

and their actual middle-class lives, women and Gusto's attempts to kill them after escaping from prison.

Another antagonist emerges in the form of conservative, family-values politician and Sacramento City

Councilmember Virgil Robinson (Phil Hartman). Robinson begins an obscenity crusade against the

group in order to score political points, despite the fact that his young son is a rabid CB4 fanatic.

4 Davis, 25:46 – 32:20.

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Robinson's main method of argument (emblematic of many other conservative politicians) seems to be

the ad hominem abusive form, making ridiculous and distorted points, such as "any person who'd defile

America's pastime by wearing a baseball cap backwards -- well, that's an evil that speaks for itself!”5

In addition to the references to Run-DMC, N.W.A., and numerous jabs at late 80's/early 90's

Hip-Hop and African-American culture and trends, the film features music by and references to hip-

hop artists such as Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick (“The Show”), KRS-One, Public Enemy, MC Ren, Ice

Cube, Eric B. and Rakim (“Paid in Full”), LL Cool J (“I Need Love”), Beastie Boys, Mary J Blige and

The Pharcyde. The film's finale takes place at CB4's reunion concert with a cover performance of

“Rapper's Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang.6 On the soundtrack album released for the film, the CB4

songs were actually recorded by Chris Rock (performing as Daddy-O), Hi-C and Kool Moe Dee.7

Also, near the beginning of the film, during the preview of the CB4 documentary, various

rappers, musicians and celebrities make cameo appearances discussing their opinions on CB4,

including Ice T, Halle Berry, Ice Cube, Flavor Flav, Shaquille O'Neal, Eazy E, and the Butthole Surfers.

Each artist has a different take on the group: Ice T seems extremely afraid of them, Ice Cube vows to

“catch” MC Gusto at a swap meet while Halle Berry thinks Gusto is kind of cute. Eazy E, perhaps the

most famous Jheri curl wearer ever, recommends that MC Gusto get a new haircut. Gibby Haynes of

the Butthole Surfers tells the story of when he first heard “Sweat Of My Balls.” While Shaq defends

the group's shocking on-stage behavior, comparing it to incidents where white rock musicians bit the

heads off of small animals during performances, Flavor Flav can see through CB4's gangsta image,

calling them “wack,” “perpetrators,” and “real fucking fake.”8

5 Maslin.
6 IMDb.
7 Discogs.
8 Davis, 5:00 – 6:50.

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SECTION 2: Critical Response

Upon its theatrical release on March 12th, 1993, CB4 met with mixed reviews from the

mainstream media. Only with the passage of time and the greater acceptance of hip-hop aesthetics into

popular culture has this film begun to be appreciated. Still, critical opinion is divided, with movie

review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes giving the film a 55% Freshness rating based on twenty

professional reviews and a Freshness rating of 59% from the site's users.9 Given that, it appears that

CB4 may just be a divisive movie: if you like it, you love it; if you don't like it, you hate it.

Some reviewers felt negatively about the sexism depicted in the film. Janet Maslin, reviewing

for The New York Times found that “the film sometimes tries to use the same sexist, mean-spirited

ethos it makes fun of. In this vein, Khandi Alexander struts enthusiastically through the film as a

predatory, gold-digging sexual athlete.”10 Several reviewers commented on the seeming disconnect

between the film's sexist contents and the fact that it was directed by a woman, Tamra Davis: “[CB4

was] so incredibly misogynistic that it's hard to believe a woman was behind the camera.”11 Another

reviewer, James Berardinelli, writing for the website ReelViews, saw the balance between sexism and

parody of political correctness: “CB4 has something to offend just about everyone. It gives the

impression of being misogynistic, although that attitude is a part of the story rather than a genuine

reflection of the film-makers' views (the director, Guncrazy's Tamra Davis, is a woman).”12

Many reviewers simply didn't think the film was very funny. A reviewer for the Austin

Chronicle said that “[even all of the celebrity cameos] fail to add any bite to this amazingly weak satire.

Rock, who says in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly that he chose this project because it was
9 Rotten Tomatoes.
10 Maslin.
11 Hicks.
12 Berardinelli.

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'the blackest thing I could do,' appears not to have noticed that this is one of the most white-bread

comedies of the last year.”13 Chris Hicks, a reviewer for the Deseret News of Salt Lake City, Utah,

noticed multiple comedic deficiencies in the film, including “woefully-underdeveloped” subplots and

that “the pacing is dull and the jokes start to sag early on.” Hicks went on to say that, while the film

has several “inspired moments,” “director Tamra Davis doesn't quite seem to have a clue as to how

comedy works.”14 While some could be quick to try to discredit Hicks' review by saying “of course a

newspaper owned by the Mormon Church (the Deseret News) wouldn't like a movie about sex, drugs

and rap music!”

But Hicks' review was far from the only scathing review the film got. “Looking for a witty,

dead-on parody of the hard-core rap scene? If so, you'll probably watch CB4 ticking off the missed

opportunities” begins Owen Gleiberman's review for Entertainment Weekly, going on to say: “CB4

would like to be a savage hip-hop lampoon, but, in fact, the film strikes a cautious balance between

satire and homage. It can't decide whether it wants to ridicule CB4 or hold the group up as role models.

What we're left with is a soggy catalog of rap cliches.”15 James Berardinelli thought of the film as

more like a string of Saturday Night Live sketches than as a unified piece of cinema: “as a series of

occasionally-amusing vignettes, CB4 is is fitfully entertaining. However, when everything is tied

together into a cohesive whole, this movie is a colossal mess.” Some reviewers didn't care much for the

attempted Spinal Tap-style mockumentary format, “the film is a cross between Wayne's World and This

is Spinal Tap... CB4 is nowhere as incisive or as clever as Spinal Tap, even though it clearly aspires to

make the connection early on with the documentary film by A. White (Chris Elliot).”16
13 Savlov.
14 Hicks.
15 Gleiberman.
16 Berardinelli, Maslin.

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Despite the seeming deluge of negative reviews for CB4, some in the media liked it. Desson

Howe, writing for The Washington Post, began his glowing review with perhaps the best bit of advice

for potential viewers of CB4 I have read yet: “Yo! A word of warning to the easily shocked and the rap-

illiterate: CB4, Chris Rock's rapumentary spoof, is bustin' through, with a strong array of 'bitches,' 'hos'

and far less printable utterances to get Friends of Tipper [Gore] reaching for their Parents Advisory [sic]

labels. But if your mood is loose and profane, if you speak hip-hop (or you just like hearing it) and if

you think Rock is funny (he is), you'll be glad you checked this out.”17 In a review for FilmThreat.com,

Brad Laidman states that even though “CB4 is a pretty good overview of black pop culture in the early

’90s. It worships hip hop music, but it isn’t afraid to lob grenades at what it has wrought” that “the

movie probably would have been just as funny if they had merely left the camera on Flavor Flav of

Public Enemy for two hours in that huge green hat out by the pool.”18

SECTION 3: My Analysis

While I really liked the film, I can understand the various reviewers' criticisms. It seemed like

they tried to stuff two hours of content into a eighty-five minute film. The black nationalist and

conservative politician subplots began strong, but never went anywhere satisfying. I feel that many of

the reviewers felt the film was unfunny because they were completely unfamiliar with hip-hop culture.

Even though I loved the film when I first saw it on Comedy Central a couple years ago, I feel I

appreciated it much more watching it this time around. This was probably because of the huge increase

in the scope of my knowledge of hip-hop between then and now, as well as the curriculum of this

17 Howe.
18 Laidman.

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course introducing me to new music, resulting in “oh, damn! That's 'Black Cop' by KRS-One playing

in the background of this scene!”19-type moments for various songs at multiple points in the film. This

phenomenon is related to the Entertainment Weekly review's point about the “cautious balance between

satire and homage.” When movie reviewers sit down to watch a comedy, they may expect it to be a

self-contained universe where everything is self-explanatory and nothing requires prior knowledge to

understand, thus their feeling that the homage to hip-hop pioneers undermines the quality of the satire.

One plot hole I found confused me greatly. If Locash is known as a middle-class suburb of Los

Angeles, that is, it doesn't have anything near the reputation for gang violence of other localities like

Compton and South Central, then why did CB4 so strongly emphasize they were “Straight Outta

Locash”? Anybody vaguely familiar with the socioeconomic differences between Greater Los Angeles

communities could see that the group came from a decidedly “un-gangsta” hometown. And in the

scene where Gusto gets arrested for the drug deal, the crowd outside the club chants “Gusto! Gusto!”

as the police put him in the paddy wagon. Gusto, even though he was a ruthless criminal, was well-

known and respected within the Locash community. If so, then how did Albert get away with stealing

Gusto's persona when he looks nothing like him? I suppose these questions must be ignored for the

narrative to advance, but it still begs the question “what the hell?” from careful viewers of the film.

I was also confused by a scene during the montage dealing with CB4's breakup and Albert's

disillusionment with the hip-hop industry. At one point, it appears that Albert, wearing an American

flag t-shirt, resorts to smoking crack cocaine while crying and cringing.20 This part confused me

because the character had appeared to be clean and serene up to this point and in the scene immediately

19 Davis, 1:00:13.
20 Davis, 1:09:22 – 1:09:36.

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following, Albert's father enters the room and Albert displays absolutely no signs of being “cracked-

out.” I suppose it was either a daydream, a reference to some other movie or merely a cinematic

metaphor for Albert's depression.

Three distinct moments stood out to me. One was MC Gusto's jailhouse poem, “I Didn't Do It.”

I also laughed well during the part at Trustus Jones' funeral when an angry loan shark comes up to

Trustus' body and starts beating up the corpse while yelling “where's my money, Motherfucker! I want

my money! Funeral or no funeral, I want my money!”. After a while, the assailing creditor halts his

attack, steps back and does a sort of Sign of the Cross to make sure all's good with God.21 Another

moment was Virgil Robinson's definition of things that could get CB4 arrested mid-performance for

obscenity. “I Didn't Do It” was a clever send up of the trend of gangsta rappers attempting to rebrand

themselves to look more intellectual or bohemian by writing and performing their version of spoken

word poetry. The part that tied it all together and made me laugh was how MC Gusto wrote out his

poem on a roll of toilet paper, so when he reads it aloud, he slowly unravels it downwards.22

Robinson's obscenity arrest threat, delivered in a scene in a green room before a concert with an

expensive prison/“lockdown”-themed set, was fully of clever, though corny, wordplay: “in my role as

head of the Sacramento City Council's Board of Decency, I, Virgil Robinson, am here to inform you

that: under penalty of arrest, you can not touch your genitalia [on-stage]; the word 'ho' can only be used

in reference to a garden tool; the word 'bitch' may only be used when describing female dogs, and then,

only when in heat; the word 'blowjob' can only be used when describing a job blowing up balloons or

children's animals.”23 Phil Hartman was one of my favorite actors.

21 Davis, 1:14:01 – 1:14:32.

22 Davis, 57:15 – 57:50.
23 Davis, 53:03 – 53:55.

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CB4 was a decent comedy that made me laugh many times. It was an important parody

mocking the era's obsession with street credibility, the idea that you were only entitled to make violent

and misogynistic music about drugs and poverty if you chose to pretend to live that life. In fact, very

few artists went on from that sort of lifestyle to have successful, or at least long, careers in the rap

business. The reality is that most “real gangstas” who commit crimes on a daily basis have only death

or a jail cell to look forward to. If N.W.A. and others in the Gangsta Rap genre actually spent as much

time as they claim committing crimes, then they wouldn't have enough time to record songs with lyrics

so incriminating and direct that they could be used as evidence in the case against them. In short, since

this film not only parodies but also idolizes musicians we've learned about in this course, I could see it

as a reasonable addition to the curriculum in the weeks between music discs two and three.

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SECTION 4: Works Cited

◦ Berardinelli, James. "Review: CB4." ReelViews, 22 Jan 2009. Web. 4 Dec 2010.
<http://www.reelviews.net/movies/c/cb4.html>.
◦ Davis, Tamra, Dir. CB4. Perf. Rock, Chris. Universal/MCA: 1993, Film.
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106500/>.
◦ Discogs. "Various - CB4 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)." Discogs, 4 Dec 2010. Web.
<http://www.discogs.com/Various-CB4-Original-Motion-Picture-
Soundtrack/release/330861>.
◦ Gleiberman, Owen. "CB4 | Movies | EW.com." Entertainment Weekly, 19 Mar 1993. Web. 4
Dec 2010. <http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,305909,00.html>.
◦ Hicks, Chris. "Movie Review: CB4." Deseret News, 18 Mar 1993. Web. 4 Dec 2010.
<http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700000290/CB4.html>.
◦ Howe, Desson. "CB4." Washington Post, 12 Mar 1993. Web. 4 Dec 2010.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/cb4rhowe_a0afa3.htm>.
◦ IMDb. "CB4 (1993) - Soundtracks." Internet Movie Database, 4 Dec 2010. Web.
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106500/soundtrack>.
◦ Laidman, Brad. "Film Threat - CB4." Film Threat, 3 Oct 2001. Web. 4 Dec 2010.
<http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/2199/>.
◦ Maslin, Janet. "Movie Review - CB4 - Review/Film; 3 Rappers Seeking Stardom." New
York Times, 12 Mar 1993. Web. 4 Dec 2010. <http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?
_r=2&res=9F0CE0DA103CF931A25750C0A965958260&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes>.24
◦ Rotten Tomatoes. "CB4 - The Movie Movie Reviews, Pictures." Rotten Tomatoes, 4 Dec
2010. Web. 4 Dec 2010. <http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cb4/>.
◦ Savlov, Marc. "Film Listings - CB4." Austin Chronicle, 19 Mar 1993. Web. 4 Dec 2010.
<http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Calendar/print.html?oid=oid:139248>.

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