COLOUR ME BAD
BLUE STORY I Brit director and YouTube sensation Rapman makes his incendiary debut…
What car are we getting in?” yells Rapman to his assistant, as Teasers and the musician-turned-filmmaker pile into the nearest vehicle. It’s mid-afternoon and, during the lunch break on the shoot of his debut movie, Blue Story, he’s leaving the unit base to swiftly location-scout a house in north London for a party scene. Teasers is invited to ride along with a man who saw his three-part rap-fuelled drama Shiro’s Story become a viral YouTube hit, clocking up more than 10 million views.
After rapper/mogul Jay-Z learnt of it and immediately signed Rapman (real name Andrew Onwubolu) to his Roc Nation label, the studios caught on. Remarkably, Blue Story - a tale of gang rivalry in southeast London - is being bankrolled by Paramount. “I can’t believe that I’m actually here, that I’m making a seven-figure movie with Paramount, I can’t believe I’m signed to one of the biggest rap labels in the world and I can’t believe Jay-Z sees me and gets excited!”
It’s not all been smooth sailing, though. This morning’s shoot, as a gang make their own music video on the streets, is filming in north London, on an estate near Edmonton Green. “It’s annoying,” says Rapman, “it’s
a southeast London story. Originally, all the locations were Lewisham borough and Southwark borough, and then Sadiq Khan jumped in…” In an area of London where knife-crime is headline news, the London mayor denied filming permits. “That put a really big downer on me.
I was upset with it.” Not least because, “The film tries to give a message saying how stupid these gang wars are and how needless this violence is.”
Rapman took inspiration from his own upbringing in Deptford, where one gang was embroiled in a “postcode war” with another, to tell the story of Timmy (Stephen Odubola) and Marco (Micheal Ward), former friends who find themselves on opposite sides. “I literally was Timmy at a point in my life, going from area to area and getting caught up in things that had nothing to do with me.”
Rapman also features in Blue Story, unseen by the protagonists, as a oneman Greek chorus, rapping/narrating certain scenes. “We call them ghost cameos,” he says of the technique he first used in Shiro’s Story. “I think this is another reason why this film sticks out so much – the power of music. It heightens everything so much more.” As the car pulls into a cul-de-sac, Rapman is all fired up. America has Boyz N The Hood and Menace II Society, he says. “I don’t think we have that in the UK. I feel like this will be the film they talk about years after I’m gone. It’s a real moment.”
ETA | 22 NOVEMBER / BLUE STORY OPENS NEXT MONTH.