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Today’s installment of Scenes (Songs) We Love is going to give us two for the price of one, because in the opening scene of Hype William’s crime fable Belly](Belly (1998) - IMDb), you not only get a slick credit sequence (and a possible contender for Credits Report), but a perfect example of how the right song and visual combination can instantly draw you in. I love a movie opening that sets the tone for what’s to come, and the opening heist set to an a cappella version of Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life” gets you ready for one of the slickest crime flicks in film history .
*Belly *was written by Williams along with his star, the rapper Nas, and the rest of the cast included other musical big names like T-Boz from TLC, DMX, Method Man and Vita, and the dancehall artist, Louie Rankin. The story revolved around a pair of childhood friends, Tommy and Sincere, played by DMX and Nas respectively – and while Sincere starts to question his life of crime, Tommy just falls in deeper and deeper with a Jamaican drug lord.
The film is stylized within an inch of its life, and that’s what I love about it. Williams made his name by changing the way the world looked at hip-hop videos and considering this was his first stab at a big-screen feature, I admire the fact he went all out. So sure, maybe the plot does lose its thread towards the end with a new storyline about government conspiracies and assassinations, but as urban crime stories go, this is easily one of the best.
After the jump: “I sold my soul to the devil, huh, the price was cheap…”
Continue reading Scenes (Songs) We Love: “Back to Life” from ‘Belly’