Belly, 1998
Director and visionary Hype Williams was killing the game in the 1990s. The natural evolution of his career was to transform from being the music video king to making feature films and the gangster movie Belly was the best vehicle to achieve this goal. Nas and DMX, at the height of their rap careers, were at the helm of the flick as the leads as Sincere and Tommy “Buns” Brown (respectively). The Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man and Power, AZ, and popular singers T-Boz and Taral Hicks also were in the film, pushing the narrative for the first time: A Hip-Hop cast fresh from the charts could hold down with their version of Scarface.
The film cost $3 million to make and tripled its profit at the box office. A decade later, its sequel, Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club was released in 2008. It starred rappers The Game, WC, and Bryce Wilson.