When I finally had a chance to sit down with pioneering rapper Slick Rick, one question nagged in the back of my brain:
Where was the eye patch?
Slick Rick, whose given name is Ricky Walters, was blinded in his right eye as a child and developed a habit of wearing stylish eye patches since his early days in the mid-1980s performing with Doug E. Fresh's Get Fresh Crew. In 2020, one multicolored, diamond-encrusted version was auctioned by Sotheby's. But when we met Saturday at the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, he was chilling behind a pair of mirrored shades — looking less like a hip hop pirate than a moneyed man of leisure summering in the playground of the Black bourgeoisie.
"This, to me, feels like an upscale Black environment," he told me backstage, after I had quizzed him before festival attendees about his visual project Victory, the film version of his first album in 26 years. "So we came here to see if the upscale black environment is nourished by what we bring. Maybe there was a little piece that's missing in their soul that this [film] fills up and gives a little inspiration … [But] I don't want to get too crazy out here, you know?"
Slick Rick needn't have worried. While the crowd on a Saturday afternoon was a little older and more straitlaced than the club kids who originally made his songs like "Children's Story" and "La Di Da Di" signature hits, they embraced the ambitious visuals and kinetic sounds on Victory, which strung together imaginative videos from the album's songs into one long, trippy film.
Assembled with movie star Idris Elba — who is also a DJ and released the album on his label, 7Wallace — Victory is packed with bustling images crafted by Nigerian director Meji Alabi, who worked on Beyoncé's Black is King video project. And the film's expansive visuals dazzle — evoking his grandfather's London living room for the song "Foreign" and dipping into a raucous, makeshift underground club for the song "Cuz I'm Here" — built around house music jams Rick heard Elba spinning during a DJ set.
"I flipped being blind into a luxury brand," he quips at one point in the video, drawing murmurs of acknowledgement from the audience. This was a grand return to form for an old rap master; I left the screening and panel discussion hoping it got wider attention so more people could see what Slick Rick and his team had cooked up.
This is the vibe at the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, or MVAAFF, now in its 23rd year, providing space for Black artists to roll out ambitious projects in the most welcoming space possible. The Vineyard holds a special place in the hearts of some Black folks — a historic sanctuary and getaway for those who can afford it — and the MVAAFF spotlights work by artists presenting a wide variety of images.
The festival continues until Aug. 9, with appearances by Michelle Obama, Spike Lee and Jennifer Hudson. Watching screenings and talking with filmmakers over the first few days felt like sifting through an intriguing array of ambitious projects centered on Black life that few other festivals might recognize or encourage.
Critics like me might grouse on the sidelines about a film's narrative arc or a documentary's missing moments. But the audience here has mostly come to admire and support Black artists at a time when making space for historically marginalized voices is derided as reverse racism, DEI shenanigans or worse.
Over several days, I saw lots of compelling work: In the dramatic short Lost/Found, Eric Roberts plays an older white man, burdened on his deathbed by guilt in the aftermath of an accident that cost the life of a young Black father. Viola Davis brings emotive narration to a searing documentary about the effort to curb Black infant mortality called The Ebony Canal.
And Lil Rel Howery was hilarious playing a crusty coach-turned high school principal in a film called The Class Reunion. (Howery said he was shooting for a comedic version of Morgan Freeman's character Joe Clark from the film Lean on Me.) Written by co-star Barshea Lowery, the movie features five alumni accidentally locked in their old cafeteria during a 10-year reunion, in a Black-centered version of The Breakfast Club.
Lowery, a native of my hometown of Gary, Ind., told me he crafted the film as an answer to all the John Hughes films set in nearby Chicago that featured zero Black people. And while watching his film packed with jokes centered on characters I knew, set in a town where I had also grown up, I felt the kind of connection that was immediate and satisfying — even beyond what I felt watching The Breakfast Club in the theater back in 1985.
Is this, I wondered, how most white people feel when watching a typical Hollywood film?
The biggest outpouring of joy I saw at the festival this year, however, was when TV producer Mara Brock Akil screened the last episode from the first season of her Netflix series Forever for a standing room only crowd. Akil, creator of classic Black-centered sitcoms like Girlfriends and The Game, has been a resident of the Vineyard for years, tipped to the area back in the mid-1990s when she was on the writing staff of Moesha.
Akil's Forever is a Black-centered teen love story loosely based on the Judy Blume novel of the same name. And its fifth episode, "The Vineyard," is set on the island, emerging as something of a love letter, showing the rhythms of a successful Black family who had been vacationing there for years.
"I felt like I was bringing the baby home and everybody thinks she is cute," said Akil after finishing a Q&A after the screening, where she told a rapturous audience she saw this story as her version of the classic romantic film, The Blue Lagoon. "You know, [when they started filming the episode] there was this moment when the crew comes in, and I wondered, 'Oh boy, did I mess up by bringing work to my place of rest?' But then I remembered … just make sure you reflect the story, not just of Black culture, but the culture of Martha's Vineyard."
In describing her connection to the island, Akil uses a word Black folks sometimes don't deploy when talking about living conditions: Relaxed.
"Our ancestors are in this land … we've created more safety and space for this place that we call home," Akil said. "So we can feel a little bit more relaxed. And shouldn't home feel that way?"
Akil may also feel relaxed because Netflix has picked up Forever for a second season. But she acknowledges that the push against diversity and inclusion in corporate America and Hollywood has made the industry more hostile to Black creative people just starting out; she's hopeful her appearance at the festival offers some encouragement to the aspiring filmmakers in the crowd.
"[Corporations] are pulling back on spending and some people are going to automatically drop out of the business — and once they get pushed out, it's hard to get back in," Akil said. "That's an assault. They're just moving the goalposts and offering less resources. So I think we have to pivot to building a new community … that's what I'm looking for."
Based on what I saw, the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival is one powerful place to build and grow that spirit.
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