The Most Unruly Makes the Hip Hop Documentaries We Deserve

For anyone who grew up watching Behind The Music documentaries, there’s this weird detachment between the music you’ve experienced and the time period it was encapsulated.

Like, Jimi Hendrix’s music still feel really modern and out of this world today, but when you listen to it, it’s hard not to think of the Woodstock footage and the grainy archive footage you’ve seen a hundred times. If you’re young, the classic rock and R&B albums you relate too always seem a couple step removed.

With YouTube, there is currently a proliferation of video essays about a variety of subjects, and whichever style of music suits you best - no matter how niche - there’s probably a pretty well made so-called “amateur" doc about your favorite artist waiting for you.

The channel The Most Unruly is an interesting example.

Look, times have been tough for the modern Kanye fan. While the rapper still has a very interesting artistic output, is persona has become truly problematic. But do you remember the time when Kanye was your source of inspiration, and you couldn’t get enough of his thought-provoking statements and rants.

Through The Most Unruly’s exhaustively researched reports, you can get back in touch with the proverbial Old Kanye.

I especially enjoyed the channel’s video Kanye West: The Making of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The title is pretty explanatory, it’s an exploration of West’s Magnum Opus (arguably). It’s not my favorite album of his, but it’s certainly his most impressive. The paroxysm of his creativity, and realization of his genius.

The Most Unruly does a great job of compiling archives, interviews excerpts and narration to recount the making of this great album. The means are modest, but nonetheless made with a lot of creativity, and what the video sometimes lacks in production value, it more than makes up with enlightening critical perspective and thorough research.

Only bummer : The video features very minimal amount of the actual music of the album, probably to avoid YouTube’s copyright bots, so I recommend having your Spotify at the ready to listen to the music discussed in the video. It’s a small price to pay for an otherwise very generous video.

The Most Unruly also presents other albums making of documentaries, as well as analysis of modern masterpieces and popular culture phenomenons, from SZA’s CTRL to Atlanta. Making this channel is a very promising follow.

Subscribe to The Most Unruly here.