THE GET DOWN CHEAT SHEET: PART 2 EPISODE 5
“ONLY FROM EXILE CAN WE COME HOME”
Damn it’s finally here. Episode 5 of Part 2. The season finale. Let’s see how it all goes down. We start off with Cadillac looking for Shaolin because Shaolin pistol whipped his momma. Yea that happened. But Shaolin and the Get Down Brothers are far gone, they are all forced to leave their homes. And where do they head to? They headed to the Zulu Nation and get are protected there as long as they are down with peace and unity. This is where Ra-Ra comes up with the plan to unite the 3 kingdoms which are made up of Grand Master Flash’s crew, Cool Herc’s crew, and Afrika Bambaataa’s the Zulu Nation crew to stop this novelty record from happening. While all this is happening Mylene is burring her father, while Papa Fuertes is in trouble for arson for burning down buildings he owned and collecting the insurance money. But he doesn’t get far because the police arrest him at one of his old construction projects that never happened. At least leave the city.
Throughout this whole story Dizzee has been missing. He actually ran off last episode. But while Shaolin is going through some records he found at the Zulu Nation he comes across a record with ‘Thor’ on it with an address. Thor is this graffiti artist that is also a ‘friend’ of Dizzee. So Shaolin goes to the address only to find Dizzee passed out with Thor. Together, Both passed out. Together. So Shaolin and Dizzee ride off together but not before Shaolin tells Dizzee that everybody ain’t gotta know everything about you. And they ride back to Shaolin’s for THE PARTY!
The party is not just any party. It’s a party comprised of all 3 kingdoms coming together to protect what they created ‘Hip-Hop’. Cadillac and his crew show up toting pistols and intending on making Shaolin and the Get Down Brothers record the novelty record for Fat Annie. But the 3 kingdoms ain’t having that. So when Cadillac pulls a gun on Shaolin and Ezekiel, he is met by all crews, and they automatic guns and pistols and they happen to out number Cadillac. So Cadillac starts to retreat but not before they snatch him up and force him to watch the rest of the show. I mean they did dress up right! The performance was a history lesson of hip hip. Cool Herc invented the playlist, Grand Master Flash invented the Backspin, and Zulu Nation created the interstellar music uniting all. And Get Down Brothers they created… Well we’ll get back to them. But one line that stuck out was when they let Grand Master Caz rap the line “And never let an MC steal your rhyme”. You might remember that for our review of episode 3. And then just like that Cadillac has this epiphany to let the Get Down Brothers out of their contract with Fat Annie, and he himself decides it’s time to follow his dreams and not his momma’s and become full-time record label owner of High Voltage Records.
Back to Mylene. Mylene is going to be staring in this new film but not before renegotiating her contract to get 24.5% of all sales of all her work. That’s crazy, unheard of. Fat Annie’s destruction ain’t over she has a crooked cop on her side. She gets Boo-Boo arrested for selling PCP, remember Shaolin had him pedaling it for him. And Ezikel doesn’t like that Shaolin had a kid pedaling drugs so he leaves Shaolin. This is where we find out Shaolin’s real name is ‘Curtis’. There are a lot of rappers named Curtis from New York actually. Shaolin thinks this is it, he’s all alone, but Fat Annie is right there waiting on Shaolin and forces him to come back to her. And Ezekiel decides to move back into his aunt’s house, where he finds out that he has gotten accepted into Yale. Even after Shaolin busted into the club with a pistol and dropped kicked a dude. Yale said one of the reasons why he got in is because of his essay he wrote about Shaolin. Yale recognized that Ezekiel too could go down this path and saw something better than drugs for him.
We next go to the studio where Mylene is laying down a track. Ezekiel shows up to tell her the great news about getting into Yale. But he hesitates because Mylene tells him that she is going to California. And Ezekiel gives her the acceptance letter to open on the plane. He watches as she records her new love ballad heartbroken from the news. This is when Drake was invented. Joking. No girl and alone, Ezekiel stays in the studio just saying some lyrics he wrote, or so he thinks. An engineer has been listening to him the whole time!! And wants him to record Ezekiel spitting his poetry like bars. And this is where the story ends. Ezekiel spitting his lyrics acapella. It then cuts to Nas finishinh the lyrics as Ezekiel reminisces on everything that’s happened. What a crazy 1978.
The hip-hop lesson from this episode is the fact that 9 months later that Rapper’s Delight dropped and became hip-hop’s first global record. And the irony is that it was recorded with a band.
Please Clap, share, comment. And I appreciate your time.
Also www.tulsalines.com has some amazing content. You should take a look.
