The Breaks, a TV Movie on VH1
In 1990, hip-hop was a subculture striving to breach the mainstream without losing its soul. The music had matured at breakneck speed in the 1980s. Rappers pushed past boasts and chants with storytelling, complex wordplay and sociopolitical consciousness, as producers vastly extended the sound-collage possibilities of sampling. “Yo! MTV Raps,” which started in 1988, was expanding the hip-hop audience beyond its urban core, and MC Hammer had a worldwide hit with “U Can’t Touch This.” But at the same time the crack epidemic was closing down the New York City clubs that had been hip-hop laboratories, while radio stations still resisted hip-hop’s genuine innovators and major labels considered hip-hop a novelty that would run its course. Everyone involved was inventing the music and the business on the spot.
That’s the backdrop for “The Breaks,” a TV movie produced by VH1 that has its premiere on Monday. It’s an affectionate, determinedly credible period piece with lightly fictionalized versions of people and places from the era. It’s also what one of its executive producers, the journalist and author Dan Charnas, describes as a “backdoor pilot,” a two-hour film introducing characters and plotlines that, if well received, could be the basis for a continuing series. VH1 will make that decision after the premiere. “Within a week we should probably have a good idea of whether it goes forward or not,” Seith Mann, its screenwriter and director, said.
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