Back in the early 1990s Black cinema was in a second wave of Black exploitation. Not since the 1970s had a rush of Black urban life been captured for the silver screen and with critical box office success. Just like the decade that brought us Shaft, Superfly, Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown, and Coffy, soundtracks that spoke on the societal ills and morality of the time in retrospect to the plots of the film were an integral part in selling the film in the 1990s.

The House Party soundtrack is a very rare exception that does none of those things.

House Party, a film by the Hudlin Brothers and starring the widely popular hip-hop duo Kid N’ Play, is a contemporary Black high school film (in the vein of Cooley High drama but with more What’s Happening playfulness) about high school issues of coming of age teens. For those who ain’t hip to the film, Kid, the main protagonist, is skating on thin ice with his single parent father (played by the incomparable late Robin Harris) for fights he keeps having in school about people dissing his mother who has since passed away. His best friend Play, the anti-villain that keeps him getting into one pickle after another, is the unsupervised Hugh Hefner wannabe playboy type trying to mack honeys, get laid, and throw parties that feed into his perceived popularity with the ladies and his cult of personality with the fellas as a pimp. Their sidekick Bilal (played by a very young Martin Lawrence) is a lame they wouldn’t associate with but since he is a DJ with his own set up Play manipulates him with promises of getting several girls panties if he comes and plays at his party which never transpires because everyone at their school knows his breath smells like chitterlings.

Play’s parents are out of town and he wants to throw an all night bash. Kid, who just got off being grounded from coming in late from a party, makes plans to go but gets into it with the school bullies (played by the soulful musical group Full Force) and gets in trouble with his old man for it and is flat out told he is not to attend. Kid, planning on showing out his new raps after a dismal previous experience against Play, sneaks out and goes. Getting to the party he’s harassed by cops, chased by the bullies he got into it at school, and even left on the side of the road by Play, who sees him flagging him down but got a car of honeys and doesn’t want to make room for him. While he does make it to the party, gets in a dance battle, a rap cypher, and flip flops between Sharaine and Sidney for his affections, what happens after he leaves the party culminates into the realest circumstances a youth of the 1990s could encounter trying to avoid the wrath of their very pissed off father who is hell bent on taking leather to his ass for acting grown.

The soundtrack gives this film life and indulges in every facet of hip-hop possible!

Yeah, I said it. While there are a lot of singers on the soundtrack the music is straight New Jack Swing, which is nothing but hip-hop beats under the vibe of the vocals. Why You Get Funky On Me and Jive Time Sucker fit perfectly the awkward social situations going on at the party between the sexes, and Jive Time Sucker is a perfect theme song for Bilal that plays indiscriminately in the background during many of his scenes. Full Force shows their natural ass with their contributions, mainly with the title track House Party (that featured Full Force acolyte all-stars Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Cheryl ‘Pepsi’ Riley, and Ex-Girlfriend) and the exceptional Ain’t My Type Of Hype, which still goes hip-hop hard over thirty years later. The theme song brings the entire fun vibe of hip-hop and the last era of partying where people or the party didn’t get shot up, the guys danced, girls sweated their hair out to get down in the groove, and everybody had a good time.

That’s not to say rappers were left out of the mix. Public Enemy’s Can’t Do Nuthin’ For You Man is the perfect juxtaposition of conflict when Bilal and Chill get into it for Chill intentionally bumping the table in an act of jealous pettiness we’ve all seen in our high school days. LL Cool J’s contribution with To The Break Of Dawn is cool too, a calming before the many storms Kid finds himself in throughout the entire movie and highly underused. Howsoever, the secret sauce are the many songs of Kid N Play, most infamously their rap battle cypher, which I still have on rotation in the car. That, Fun House, and Kid’s solo rap with George Clinton at the rich people’s dinner are just pure enjoyment of a simpler time when hip-hop knew when to be creatively playful, seriously vicious, and get the crowd hype.

I was ten years old when the film came out and it still speaks to my hip-hop soul.

House Party is in the unacknowledged pantheon of cult classics of hip-hop films we run off our teeth like butter. If you’re going to mention Krush Groove, Beat Street, Breakin’, and the abysmal Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (which the latter is the worst film made since Snow White and the Three Stooges) you have to have House Party up there right behind Beat Street. The Hudlin brothers crafted a cinematic masterpiece that has never gone stale or gotten stuck in an era that can’t be understood by anyone outside of that time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a screwball urban comedy of sorts and I’m not taking away from that, but it’s also a hip-hop musical and we all should embrace it as that. It’s the type of film that made all of us 1980s kids want that kind of first time house party experience when we got to high school.

Unfortunately, by the time I was a freshman in 1994 gangster rap had poisoned the hip-hop well and parties like Play’s were getting shot up and raided by police so few of us could go without fear of being wounded. Sadly, Kid N’ Play never recaptured the magic of their high school house partying with the subsequent sequels (which the second one is about Kid in college and the third with him getting married) nor did the vibe of the real down and dirty underground hip-hop sound follow them into their later acting ventures as they virtually disappeared as a group. We won’t even acknowledge the existence of the unnecessary remake with their cameo appearance that lingers like an old batch of collard greens three months after Thanksgiving. Hip-Hop got their full due at in House Party, and if nothing else it will always live on in that film because it stood on its full business.

It is just bittersweet this will never happen ever again in a film.

“Standing On Hip Hop Business At The House Party,” an article by Tia Ja’nae from ARTICULATE MADNESS. Images are in the public domain and researched by by ART | library deco editorial staff. Album Provided by YouTube.com.