‘Backstage’ Pass Shows Life of Sex, Drugs and Rap

What did it take to be backstage on last year’s Hard Knock Life tour--touted as the most successful and problem-free major rap concert tour up to the time? Well, unless you were a rapper worthy of being in the company of Jay-Z, DMX, Method Man and the other Hard Knock performers or a member of their retinues or families, apparently the only way to get behind the scenes was to be a pot dealer or a young woman willing to expose body parts (or more).

Or be a documentary filmmaker.

At the behest of the tour’s organizers, director Chris Fiore took a crew on the trek to chronicle the backstage life. And from his perspective, as shown in “Backstage,” it seems that there were three primary activities: doing business, smoking dope and ogling and/or fondling women.

On the first front, Fiore makes good use of his access. While the boasts about the tour’s success aren’t really explored, the dynamics of such a venture and the personalities behind it unfold through what prove to be the most entertaining sequences.

*

The highlights may well be a couple of displays of entrepreneurial muscle by Damon Dash, co-founder and CEO of Roc-A-Fella Records and a key partner in the tour. He’s also the producer of the film, so it’s not surprising that he gets a generous (and flattering) amount of screen time.

But a scene where he, while getting a hair trim, goes head to head with a co-sponsoring record company’s executive, berating him for what he sees as trying to steal the tour’s limelight, rivals any of the concert performance clips that thread through the film. Jay-Z and DMX may be better with a rhyme, but Dash’s verbal dances stand as business freestyling at its best.

On the second matter, it’s amusing and informative to watch as, one by one, the performers are profiled as smart (street-smart and/or otherwise), talented and ambitious, and then one by one melt into stoned stupor. It may not have been Fiore’s intent to transmit an anti-pot message, and in fact the audience may well find the rap heroes’ habits amusing or even a romantic part of that existence. But the footage speaks for itself.

*

Ditto for the groupies sequences, in which these street-toughened men turn into silly little boys. Very much lacking is any perspective on this from the women involved in the tour, especially performers Eve and Amil. The former, who emerged from the tour a big star, is hardly seen and barely heard at all. Amil is given screen time, but the focus is much more on her supermodel looks than on her rapping talents.

Frankly, not many issues surrounding the tour are addressed in any depth. This didn’t need to be a state-of-rap film exploring the plethora of controversies out there, but it would be nice to get some sense of what made this an unprecedented tour package. And it would be very valuable to have some examination of the reasons earlier rap tours had been either financial failures or plagued by violence and how Hard Knock managed to transcend that.

And most lacking, perhaps, is the music itself. Onstage clips are generally excerpts rather than whole songs, and while there’s enough to show charming Jay-Z’s gifts as a crowd-pleaser, DMX’s strong street poetry and the likable Beanie Sigel’s versatile rhyming skills, hard-core fans (and who else will be in the audience?) may feel shortchanged. Of course, the film is titled “Backstage,” not “On Stage,” and it delivers the stars in unguarded moments that should give fans--if not everyone--some kicks.

* MPAA rating: R, for language and nudity. Times guidelines: The dialogue between the rappers and their crews is almost invariably expletive-laced, there are many scenes showing marijuana use in a favorable light and several involving female fans in various states of undress.

‘Backstage’

A Dimension Films presentation in association with Roc-A-Fella Records and the Island Def Jam Music Group. Director and editor Chris Fiore. Producer Damon Dash. Executive producers Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Cary Granat and Lyor Cohen. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

In general release.