Hip-hop of a Different Hue
New Zealand hip-hop label Dawn Raid Entertainment has been a trailblazer since its launch in 1999, bringing a distinctly Polynesian sensibility to a traditionally African-American artform – a journey chronicled in Oscar Kightley’s new documentary. At a time when questions of race and identity are at the forefront of conversation, the film offers a fascinating insight into US cultural influence abroad, the local and universal struggles of disadvantaged minorities, and the art that emerges from these intersections, as CJ Johnson investigates.
The first words we hear in Dawn Raid (2021), Oscar Kightley’s enormously entertaining feature-length documentary about the rise, fall and rebirth of Dawn Raid Entertainment – New Zealand’s first and, by far, most influential hip-hop label – are American. ‘Yo, yo, yo,’ says an identifiably African-American voice on an answering machine, as we see images of the Manhattan skyline glistening in glorious early-morning sunlight. ‘What’s up, Dawn Raid? Hey, let’s make this worldwide global money on this rap shit.’
Over the next hour and thirty-eight minutes, we will see Dawn Raid Entertainment indeed make some global money out of rap music, including in New York City – and go on to lose some substantial money, too. Their story, and this movie, is a cautionary business tale about how two young fellas with big dreams met at a marketing class at the Manukau Institute of Technology, created an industry and almost lost it. But it is also, if never explicitly, about the fundamental cultural contradictions at the heart of ‘global’ rap and hip-hop. From day one of the company’s formation in 1999, the founders of Dawn Raid Entertainment had their sights on the
