This past fall I had the pleasure of watching Belly (1998) at FilmScene. It’s a vibrant, fast-paced journey that examines two lifelong friends and how they navigate the brutal systems designed to oppress them. Oh, and it’s directed by none other than Hype Williams…and stars both DMX and Nas. Yeah, that Nas (and on top of that, the cast also includes Wu Tang’s own Method Man). 

That should really be all I need to say. If you haven’t yet, go experience the film for yourself before reading on. Or don’t– I suppose I can’t stop you. 

Anyways. Belly was released in 1998. The powerful trio of Hype Williams, DMX, and Nas makes for an experience that is, if nothing else, cinematic and entertaining. But beyond that, Belly actually has a lot of thematic depth. It’s more than just a film; it’s a blend of mediums. Fittingly, the medium this film blends with is rap music– an art form built on leveraging the effects of systematic oppression through storytelling. When asked why the movie is called “Belly,” KRUI’s Julia reasoned it stands in reference to the allegorical “Belly of the Beast,” and I couldn’t agree more. The world as we are introduced to it is one set in stone. Our two leads, Tommy (DMX) and Sincere (Nas), live a life of crime in Queens, New York. It’s a harsh environment where they must navigate peril on a daily basis (as Sincere later remarks, “It’s a war out here”). In a hard world, those who hesitate to make hard decisions don’t get far. Consequently, Sin (short for Sincere) and Tommy rob, kill, and sell drugs. Anything, as Tommy says, “in pursuit of the dollar.” Morality is ill-afforded and while it may not be right, it’s “better them than us.” This is just how things are; there is nothing that can be done. Or is there? This question forms the moral divide along which director Hype Williams traces his main thesis.

 As Tommy and Sin are pulled deeper into the drug trade, both are repeatedly forced to confront their morality and either reaffirm or rebuke their ideals, with the consequences of these choices increasing in parallel fashion. Eventually each character comes across someone who sparks their rejection of the status quo–and today I want to talk about Sin’s encounter. Sin’s moral crossroads in Belly is lifted straight from Nas (the actor playing Sincere)’s song, “One Love,” one of ten legendary entries in the timeless Illmatic. The scene essentially plays out the same in both song and film: Nas runs into a friend of his, named Shorty, selling drugs on a park bench. Shorty is twelve years old and already entangled in the same life of crime that threatens to consume our protagonists– early in the conversation he recounts having recently shot someone (in Belly he goes as far as to show Nas the gun). Nas cautions Shorty, urging him to get off the streets before he becomes permanently ensnared in the same vicious cycle Nas is struggling to escape. Nas famously tells Shorty, “the one that’s murdered be the cool one,” a line that has permeated rap since its utterance (see Kendrick Lamar’s line, “the one in front of the gun lives forever”). This piece of advice seems to be an attempt at disillusioning Shorty’s idolatry of violent street life; a warning that revered acts of violence leave no winners– you’re either dead or in jail. In Belly, Nas continues, remarking, “It’s a war out here,” a variance of another iconic line originating from 90s hip-hop (this particular exchange is actually sampled in rapper Joey Bada$$’s hit song Righteous Minds, a song about the struggle to keep one’s conscious in a world filled with so much violence). Shorty laughs, telling Nas he likes his style. To Nas’s dismay, it seems his counsel has had little effect. He resigns to wishing Shorty well, leaving him with some jewelry and urging him to “rise above.” So, within the story of Belly, how does this interaction impact Sincere? Already questioning the sagacity of his criminal partnership with Tommy, this ugly, up-close view of the system’s handiwork (a child dealing with drugs and guns) provides Sin with perspective. A moment of levity; an opportunity for unadulterated cognizance of the grotesque nature of the metaphorical beast inside whose belly Sin, Tommy, and Shorty reside. This interaction–taking place just before act three of the film–lays the foundation for Sin’s (spoiler alert) divergence from Tommy and the accompanying life of crime. As Tommy continues deeper into violence, Sin takes his family and moves to Africa– refusing to raise his son in the grasp of the same systematic racial oppression that has already corrupted Shorty, instead relocating to the place where his people first lived free before that same system enslaved them. 

The preservation of this vivid scene in Belly seems to be Hype Williams’ way of lending his voice to Nas’s, cautioning viewers and listeners against idealizing crime and violence. This seems an appropriate, yet initially confusing place to deploy such a message. Both Nas and Hype Williams seem to do exactly that–glorify crime and violence–in their art; Belly and Illmatic are teeming with such imagery. This apparent hypocrisy speaks to the effectiveness of the systematic oppression that occupies the real world in which these pieces of art were created. In a culture where street violence is an exotic commodity (speaking in terms of the hegemonically perpetuated concept of “civilization vs. barbarism”) that those advantaged by the system can comfortably engage with in order to satisfy their morbid allure for such violence, glorifying violence exists as one of the few ways oppressed groups can secure a platform on which to speak to the masses (as has been the case with rap for decades). This creates a difficult system, one in which the only way to publicly criticize and caution against the horrors of the beast is to glorify what life looks like inside the belly.