Death of a Dynasty

Part lampoon, part indictment, rap mogul Damon Dash's Death of a Dynasty uses a fair share of biting humor to investigate his music's lethal side, trotting out one hilarious caricature after another, as when a fed-up studio engineer laments: "I've got a master's degree from Juilliard! I don't need this shit!" In its final act, the film threatens to take a movie-of-the-week turn, but avoids preachiness by concluding that in rap's gladiatorial milieu, journalist (Moss-Bachrach) and artist (Capone) often behave as a single symbiotic organism.