Full disclosure: I love Stones Throw Records. When I started to get fed up with the hip-hop landscape more than a decade ago (enough with the Cash Money Millionaires, please!), the West Coast label was one of the first places I looked when I started seeking out alternative hip-hop. Over the years, I've written obsessively about the label and its artists. (True story: The last time I was in L.A. several years ago, the label's former manager invited me to tour the offices. Unfortunately, I was too hung over, not to mention I didn't exactly know where it was — when I arrived at the address I thought was the label, it was actually a Mailboxes, Etc.)
So I may be a bit biased when I say I enjoyed Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, a new documentary chronicling the label's history. I have a feeling the doc is best suited to other beat junkies and hip-hop heads like myself, and since The Belcourt is showing the doc on only two nights, the theater seems well aware that the movie is going to attract a small but savvy audience.
Nevertheless, as the label approaches its 20th year in business, Vinyl literally takes a novel approach to telling the Stones Throw story, breaking down its history in chapters. We start off in the LP-covered abode of Chris Manak, the DJ and Stones Throw founder better known as Peanut Butter Wolf. He's entertaining a party full of people who marvel at his record collection. The movie then takes it back to San Jose, Calif., where Wolf grew up as a serious beat junkie, recording mixtapes full of R&B and disco goodies before doing his homework.
In the early '90s, the Wolf joined forces with rapper/good buddy Charizma, forming a hip-hop union that had them itching to be discovered by a major label. Tragically, that dream was cut short when Charizma was killed during a botched robbery in 1993.
A few years after his loss, Wolf went on his own and formed Stones Throw. (Watch for former 91 Rock DJ Eothen Alapatt, aka Egon, who introduced Wolf to Nashville and became a cornerstone of the label.) Stones Throw initially got its foot in the door releasing hip-hop from the likes of multi-aliased beatsmith Madlib, who openly admits in the movie that his loopiest music comes from consuming mushrooms. Madlib's music would attract other daring hip-hoppers to the label, including masked MC MF Doom and influential Detroit producer J Dilla, who did only a couple of acclaimed releases for Stones Throw before passing away from lupus complications in 2006.
This balance of triumph and tragedy keeps the movie from becoming a 94-minute Stones Throw infomercial. Under Jeff Broadway's well-woven direction, past and present labelmates such as J Rocc, Dam-Funk and Mayer Hawthorne, along with celebrity admirers like Kanye West, Questlove and Common, tell how the label has morphed into an island for lost, musical souls. It's a place where outsiders — whether they're rappers, soul singers, instrumentalists or experimental eccentrics — can show up and be embraced. That's certainly what drew me to them.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
