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SLIFF - The Great Hip Hop Hoax

The Great Hip Hop Hoax
Jeanie Finlay, U.K., 2013, 88 min.
Sunday, Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m., KDHX
When the promising Scottish rap act Silibil n' Brains was laughed off the stage by hysterical A&R people who dubbed them "the rapping Proclaimers," Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain re-invented themselves as West Coast homeboys. Sony subsequently signed them to a recording deal, and over a period of two years Billy and Gavin lived the dream. No one knew or even suspected that they were in fact just a couple of college boys from Dundee with fake American accents they had learned from MTV. But lying 24/7 took its toll, and Billy and Gavin's bromance and music career were eventually left in tatters. "It's possible to regard Jeanie Finlay's documentary as a breezy account of an audacious con-trick perpetrated on the British music industry by two young Scottish rappers," writes the Telegraph newspaper. "That would be fine in itself, yet it's also something deeper a smart morality tale about the illusory nature of celebrity, and the pressures it exerts once attained."

Shown with The Come Up (Rotting Peaches Pictures, U.S., 2013, 7 min.): St. Louis hip-hop artist Tef Poe details the difficult circumstances of his life.