Uprising: Hip Hop & The LA Riots

Twenty years after the LA Riots turned the City of Angels on its head, director Mark Ford shows how important hip hop was in predicting and fanning these violent race riots. According to rapper KRS One, " Rodney King was the confirmation of everything we had been rapping about since the early 1970s." In short, the situation was a ticking time bomb. The film opens with footage of Rodney King himself. For the first time in many years, he visits the spot where he was beaten by four white policemen, who were later acquitted of assault - a verdict that lit the fuse for the historic riots. King tells his story without sentiment, and police officers, journalists, victims, rioters and rappers such as Ice T and Nas all express their thoughts on the historic events of 1992. Thanks in part to the extensive use of carefully chosen archive footage, Ford makes it clear why so many people in LA chose to rise up against inequality and police brutality, even if this meant using violence themselves -violence that also took many innocent bystanders.