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Posts Tagged ‘DJ Qualls’

Hustle & Flow (20th anniversary revisit)

Tuesday, July 29th, 2025

If you’re keeping track, please add HUSTLE & FLOW to the list of summer ’05 movies that hold the fuck up. Maybe at the top. I think this is the first time I’ve seen it since the theater, and I wasn’t sure if I was building it up in my memory. No, this is really something special.

SUMMER 2005It takes place in Memphis, where small time pimp and weed dealer DJay (Terrence Howard, WHO’S THE MAN?) revives an old dream to become a rapper. It kinda happens by coincidence. First one of his customers (Claude Phillips) insists on trading him a Casio keyboard for drugs (“What am I, a pawn shop?”), which gets him thinking about playing music. Then he runs into Key (Anthony Anderson, URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT), who he knew in middle school, at a convenience store, has a conversation and ends up going to watch him record a singer at a church. If DJay had shown up five minutes later or if Key hadn’t needed batteries none of this would’ve happened. But they do, so DJay later shows up at Key’s house, raps for him and convinces him to come over and help him record a demo tape. (read the rest of this shit…)

Hustle & Flow

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

I had a good feeling about this movie from right about the time the title came on the screen. It was a shot of a pimp (Terence Howard) and a ho (Taryn Manning) driving in a car, and it freeze frames to write the title in yellow ’70s style lettering.

I always like Terence Howard but I’ve never seen him in a lead role before. He’s always the supporting role that steals the movie. Here he has a lead role that steals the movie. I haven’t seen GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN but I would be surprised if Terence Howard’s performance in this movie doesn’t run a hundred circles around his co-star in that movie, both as an actor and as a rapper. True, he does mumble alot in this movie (you almost need subtitles) but I still feel his enunciation is better than Fifty Cents. (read the rest of this shit…)