Product Description
-------------------
A look at the history of Suge Knight's notorious hip hop record
label Death Row, the one-time home of Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur
and Dr Dre.
From .co.uk
-----------
Welcome to Death Row tells the unauthorised history of the most
notorious rap label ever. And what a story it is, with enough
blood and betrayal to satiate the Borgias and machinations that
would make Machiavelli proud. The rise and fall of Death Row and
its power-hungry CEO, Marion "Suge" Knight, makes The Godher
look like a bedtime story. The film centres on the testimony of
Michael Harris--also known as "Harry O", as in octopus, because
he had his business fingers in so many pies--who provided Suge
Knight with the seed money to set up Death Row, and assigned his
lawyer David Kenner to oversee the label's business affairs. The
film traces the entire controversial history of the label, which
at its height was turning over $500 million a year, and the
impact it had on not only the music industry but American
culture. "It was like working in a prison", says Doug Young, the
label's record promoter, of Suge Knight's predilection for hiring
gangsters and ex-felons. The film also details the relationship
between Death Row and its biggest star, Tupac Shakur, and the
effect that Shakur's sudden death in a Las Ve drive-by
shooting had on the label's fortunes (a story told in greater
depth in Savidge's film Thug Immortal).
Although none of the major players in this drama are represented
on tape--Dr Dre and Inter Records heads Jimmy Iovine and Ted
Fields are as conspicuous by their absence as lawyer David Kenner
and Suge Knight, the villains of the piece--the producers have
unearthed an alarming number of believable behind-the-scenes
sources including record promoters, managers, private
investigators and former associates and employees of the label.
Director Savidge wisely uses talking heads to tell his story,
weaving into it a wealth of archive material and previously
unseen home-video footage. The epic narrative is split into
discrete chapters but, with so much information and opinion
flying about, at times the chronology of events becomes confused.
Yet this does little to spoil a documentary that goes a long way
to revealing the connection between the music industry
and organised crime, and the desire for power and glory that
drives them both.
On the DVD: As if there wasn't enough information to digest in
the documentary (which is presented in a clean 1:85.1 anamorphic
format), the extra features on the DVD provide even more
supplementary evidence. There are outtakes from the interviews
used in the main feature, as well as additional interview footage
of Snoop Dogg and Harry O. There is uncensored security camera
footage of a fight in the lobby of the MGM Grand involving the
Death Row entourage that preceded the death of Tupac Shakur by
minutes, a music video for "Deep Cover" (the song that launched
Snoop Dogg) and a fascinating audio commentary by director
Savidge and producers Jeff Scheftel and Stephen A Housden, in
which they relate the difficulties encountered in obtaining the
trust of those they interviewed and the factors they took into
consideration when constructing the film. Savidge recalls that
the model they had in mind was the fractured, multi-perspective
narrative of Kurosawa's omon. --Chris Campion