'Beats, Rhymes & Life': a hip-hop moment

Fueled by his own unabashed affection for his subjects, actor Michael Rapaport transitions into directing with a film that -- at long last -- does for hip-hop what Martin Scorsese ("The Last Waltz") and D.A. Pennebaker ("Don't Look Back") long ago did for the objects of their own rock-and-roll fixations. Namely, deliver a cinematic moment that does justice to the music, the musicians and their fans' emotional attachment for both, while creating a movie that doesn't require any pre-existing interest to be a satisfying film and emotional catharsis.

A Tribe Called Quest, which officially broke up in 1998 (reuniting for the ill-fated 2008 tour that provides Rapaport with his film's launch point), was a pioneering alternative hip-hop act and more than a decade later holds a fierce place in fans' hearts -- including Rapaport's. The members: Q-Tip, self-declared leader and perfectionist; Phife Dawg, who emerges as a memorable stage presence and diabetic sugar junkie; Jarobi White, who leaves after Tribe's first album to pursue a cooking career; and the soft-spoken Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who finds himself, as the band's DJ and producer, at the center of the escalating Q-Tip-Phife rivalry.

Rapaport stays mostly out of the way, allowing the members of the Queens-based ATCQ to tell their own story. And he somehow manages -- via personal interviews, with old concert footage, music videos, animations and still imagery -- to fit four careers into a highly condensed and always fascinating nonfiction drama in which the talents, egos and artistic propulsion all seem to have come together into something that was as blessed in its creation as it was inevitable in its dissolution.