began to illuminate films with poetry about real-life struggles with gangs, drug-dealing, and poverty that crossed over to white audiences who were attracted by the music and lifestyles. The music began to expand further, and groups like the Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, and Notorious B.I.G.

Tupac had a preternatural acting talent, exploding off the screen with a gravitas informed by his own politically-charged upbringing, and became an authentic voice to helm movies about street life. This became one of the most fertile growth periods for black filmmaking and music, with filmmakers like Lee, the Hughes Brothers, and John Singleton making Oscar-worthy films as artists like Ice Cube, Ice T, and Tupac Shakur began crossing over from rapping into acting. The '80s had laid the groundwork for hip-hop in film, but nobody could argue that the 90s was rap's greatest decade, musically speaking, and Hollywood had little choice but to begin green lighting movies about African-American lives set to rap music as it began to dominate the airwaves and MTV. Over on the West Coast, another '80s movie, Colors, made the bold move of featuring an Ice-T song as its title track, along with edgier tracks by the likes of MC Shan as well as Eric B. Finally, by the end of the decade, Spike Lee made his Brooklyn love letter, Do The Right Thing, with a soundtrack featuring the highly political rap group Public Enemy, suddenly alerting movie executives to the music's potential for storytelling and connecting to youthful audiences. Earlier, 8'0s movies did have some breakthroughs for rap, with documentaries like Style Wars featuring incredible songs and documenting the early history of everything from rappers and b-boys to graffiti crews and early DJ's, but rap didn't make it into many narrative films. By the early '90s, Rap began to branch out into sub-genres like gangsta rap, bounce, boom bap - even Jazz rap, and started to get heavy play in movies for its authenticity in telling inner-city stories. While the '80s marked the earliest introduction of rap music to movie soundtracks, the music genre was used sparingly and often in a derogatory fashion.

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