Love of a black planet

Miami filmmakers present documentary about hip- hop.

As he excavated 40 years of hiphop culture for theVH1documentary “TheTanning of America: OneNationUnder HipHop,” Miami filmmaker Billy Corben turned up footage of Sean “Diddy” Combs at the 2004 DemocraticNational Convention bantering with a young senator fromIllinois: Barack Obama.

Corben, who with Alfred Spellman runs the Miami- based documentary studio Rakontur, says the clip will appear in the four- part documentary, which traces hip- hop’s relentless push into the mainstream. Rap culturewas so influential, he argues, that it even helped a president get elected.

“Diddywas motivating the hiphop generation to register to vote, not that itworked,” says Corben, whose film will premiereMonday. “I think it’s a bold but not unreasonable thesis.”

The documentary follows hip- hop culture fromearly- 1970s blaxploitationmovies, which influenced the music, to the present- day ubiquity of rap moguls ( Diddy, Dr. Dre) and hip- hop royalty ( Jay- Z, Pharrell). Corben and Spellman filmed in Miami andNewYork, talking toMariah Carey, Al Sharpton, RonHoward, ReverendRun, Nas and Steve Stoute, the ad man and former music executive whose book “TheTanning of America” inspired the documentary, Corben says.

“Hip- hop goes on to impact fashion, movies, popular culture, and it proliferated because itwas cool. ‘ Sanford and Son,’ Run- DMC’s ‘ My Adidas,’ ‘ Fight the Power,’ ‘ In Living Color,’ ” Corben says. “It’s progress.”