Movie Review: Hustle and Flow

The first time I heard about Hustle and Flow was when I was watching the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 and one of the songs in the film, “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” won an Oscar for Best Original Song. After that, I didn’t think about the film again, especially because I was too young at the time to see it. But fast forward to 2021 and I’m older and have seen enough R rated dramas to not mind seeing another one. Also, the movie received positive reviews from critics, so I wanted to see it.

It was definitely different from watching Zola. For those who haven’t seen Zola, it’s a dark comedy based on a true Twitter thread by a young Black woman named A’Ziah “Zola” King, who meets a fellow stripper while waitressing in Detroit and embarks with her on a wild road trip to Florida. The pimp in Hustle and Flow, played by Terrence Howard, ends up being a good guy who just wants to follow his dream of being a musician. Even though he doesn’t respect the women in his life, they still help him follow his musician dreams. The pimp in Zola, however, is anything but a good guy and doesn’t even become a good guy at any point during the film. In one scene of Hustle and Flow, D’Jay has Nola accompany him to a pawn shop where he is buying equipment for his recording studio, but the old white guy working there is unwilling to give him a discount for the expensive equipment. But then the guy ogles Nola and DJay arranges for her to have sex with him in exchange for the music equipment (this scene creeped me the fuck out, not gonna lie.) Nola then leaves the store and DJay threatens her with abusive language and she tells him she doesn’t want to hustle anymore, and wants something different in life even if she doesn’t know what that is. DJay then has Nola help him out in recording his rap album, and later on in the film when he is arrested for shooting up a bar he gives her his cassette tape and has her say aloud that she is in charge, meaning that she needs to take over his career while he is in prison. She is later scene getting out of a car wearing a business suit (which early on in the movie she told DJay she wanted to wear) and heels and walking to a radio station, and she seduces the DJ at the station to play DJay’s song “Whoop That Trick,” which he recorded at his home with Shug, Nola, Shelly, and Clyde. The song ends up being a hit and everyone rejoices.

Zola, however, paints a much grimmer picture. There are many scenes where Stefani, the white woman who coerces Zola to go on the trip with them, faces brutal treatment from her pimp, X (Colman Domingo acted the hell out of that role, and I’m glad I watched interviews of him talking about his character before watching the film, so I wouldn’t be scared shitless by his character.) When Zola first gets in the car, it seems they are all having a fun time, with X driving and all of them–X, Zola, Derek, and Stefani—rapping loudly to Migos’ “Hannah Montana.” However, within the first fifteen minutes of the film things go dark real quick, and we find out that X is actually more sinister than he appears. In one scene of the film (that has stayed stuck in my memory in the months after watching the movie) Stefani has sex with a client and ends up making less than she is worth, and Zola is furious with that, telling Stefani that “pussy is worth thousands.” Stefani tells her with false confidence that she doesn’t set the price for her services, and Zola has her update her profile and set a rate for her services. Stefani ends up making a ton of money that evening with multiple clients, but the next morning, when Stefani gives the money to X, he gets angry and tells Stefani to not let Zola get it in her head that her services are worth a lot of money, and that he is in charge when it comes to negotiating the rate of Stefani’s services. Stefani taps him quietly on the shoulder, and whispers in his ear if she can have some of the money (that she, not X, made through her own work), X tells her no and to be grateful that she has “food in her belly” and that he is providing her with these places to stay. Stefani lives in fear of X because he is absolutely an unpredictable character, and even though she projects this air of confidence around Zola, that X is just doing his job as her pimp and that she has no problems with him, it’s obvious that he uses fear and pumps himself up to intimidate Stefani and make her feel like she doesn’t have control over her life. In another scene, Stefani is forced into a client’s room and locked in a closet, and X, Zola and Derek run over to the room to get her. X shoots the guy who held her captive and they end up getting Stefani out of there, but in all honesty he’s not doing it because he like Stefani. He’s doing it because she makes him money, and if he loses her he will lose his cash flow, especially because Zola refuses to follow through with anything he does because she is a good bullshit detector and knows X is trying to intimidate her and make her lose her sense of self-worth. X doesn’t care about Stefani’s hopes and dreams, or even really about her career, unless it makes him money.

I am actually glad I watched Zola before watching Hustle and Flow. And I admit, I cannot compare the two movies to one another. While both movies are crime films, Hustle and Flow is a serious drama, and even though it has its tender moments and some funny moments of joy, it is at the end of the day a drama. Zola, however, is a dark comedy that has its funny moments, and it was an enjoyable film to watch (I think had I not read the Twitter thread before seeing the movie, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated the film as much.) The film doesn’t of course poke fun at sex trafficking or dancers themselves. The comedy lies in the absurdity of Stefanie, Derek and X, and knowing that Zola already knows how trippy and wild these people are as she quietly observes their ridiculous behavior. In Hustle and Flow, DJay is the main character and the women he pimps (Shug, Nola, and Lexus) are supporting characters who help bolster his music career so that he can address his midlife crisis (not that that isn’t important or that DJay’s dreams didn’t matter. They certainly did, and as a musician myself the film was quite inspiring in that sense) while in Zola, the pimp is a supporting character and Zola’s narrative is front and center and she gets to tell it just as it happened. Zola actually gives the lived account of a woman who was coerced into this trip. Honestly, it wouldn’t be fair for me to reduce it to just a wild trip to Florida. It was human trafficking and Zola, a Black woman and dancer, was actually in real life coerced by a young white woman into the human trafficking business and she actually shared the trauma she dealt with on that trip on Twitter in 2015. In one scene, Zola is sitting by herself at the poolside of the hotel X has them stay at, and she is just trying to have some alone time to herself but then X interrupts her and forces her to come back inside so that she can accompany Stefanie to meet with clients. Zola then says that she came on the trip to dance (at the beginning, when she and Stefanie first meet they dance together at a strip club, make a ton of money and have a good time just being themselves and doing their work) but then X tells her that “they’re done with that” and that she is here so that she and Stefanie can make him money. In Hustle and Flow, we briefly see Lexus and other women working at the strip club, and DJay sending Nola off to meet with clients, but that’s pretty much it. We don’t actually see what the men do to these women, how they treat them. It’s pretty much focused on DJay, his old high school friend Clyde, and a white guy named Shelly who all work together to create an album and help launch DJay’s career. Nola, Lexus and Shug are there for support, and even though Shug sings the chorus on the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” she is still at the end of the day a supporting character who helped the main character succeed in his career.

And of course, that’s not a bad thing in itself. The movie is really about people making music together and enjoying the process of it. It actually reminded me of Begin Again in that sense, because in Begin Again Keira Knightley’s character, Gretta, and Mark Ruffalo’s character, Dan, create their own band from scratch, recruiting random musicians who aren’t signed to a record label and just want to make music together and have fun. It is an enriching process of music making for all of them. Of course, the way Gretta and Dan see the music making is different from how DJay views it. Dan and Gretta just want to enjoy life and making music together, and even when Gretta sells the music online for a small price, Dan doesn’t mind because they had fun on the album together. DJay, however, puts a lot of pressure on Shug when she is singing the vocals for the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” because he really wants his album to get noticed by big producers and in particular, a famous musician he looks up to called Skinny Black (played by real-life rapper Ludacris). They are not making the album for fun; they are having fun in the process, but they are not just making the album for laughs. DJay wants worldly success and acclaim because he came from nothing and is going through a point in his life where he doesn’t know what to do. Dan, however, is also going through a midlife crisis like DJay, but he was already working for a renowned record company for years so he had access to the resources in the music industry and all the connections. He has won many awards, while DJay is just getting started and has to start from scratch and has to work extremely hard to get noticed by the big record labels and radio stations, and of course, his idol Skinny Black, who ends up putting his career down and not supporting DJay in his dreams. Even though these two movies about music are totally different in their subject matter, they are about people following their dreams from scratch even when the going goes rough for them.

Here is the trailer for Hustle and Flow:

Hustle and Flow. 2005. Rated R for sex and drug content, pervasive language and some violence.