Movie Review: Patti Cake$

I had been meaning to see this movie for a while. I saw the trailer a long time ago and thought it was really cool. If you haven’t seen Patti Cake$, it’s about a young white woman named Patricia Dombrowski, aka Patti, who lives in a small town in New Jersey but has big aspirations to become a famous rapper like her idol, O-Z. Even though she struggles to make it big, she and her friends Jheri, Bastard and her grandma Nana form a rap group called PBNJ together and Patti finds herself developing more confidence in herself as a rapper. I think that is why I love this movie, because it showed me that even if circumstances are hard, you can take steps towards accomplishing your dreams, but it requires a lot of serious dedication. Patti works two jobs and gets fired from one of them, and it puts a strain on the family finances. She gets frequent calls from debt collectors telling her that she is overdue on rent and other bills, and she also has to take care of her mom and grandma. But she spends time with Bastard and Jheri writing rhymes and recording in Bastard’s studio.

The relationship between Patti and her mom is really fraught at the beginning. Barb comes in while Patti is working at the bar and wants Patti to serve her alcohol, but Patti doesn’t want to. She does it though and after multiple shots of liquor she watches her mom sing on stage and then later vomit in the bathroom stall. Her mom is an excellent singer, but she gave up on her dreams when she had Patti and in fact, she blames a lot of her inability to follow her dreams on Patti. When Patti tells her about her rapping career, her mom laughs about it and makes fun of her for it, but it’s not until she actually sees Patti performing one night that she really starts to respect that girlfriend has bars.

It was also sweet seeing the romance between Patti and Bastard. When we first see Bastard he is at an open mic playing heavy metal on guitar and people are throwing stuff at him and teasing him. At first he doesn’t warm up to Danielle even when she tells him she liked his stuff but over time as he gets to know her he sees that she really likes his music and wants to collaborate with him, and they develop a beautiful friendship over the course of the movie. I also love love love the friendship between Jheri and Patti. I think that is why I gravitated towards the movie in the first place, because at the beginning of the trailer Jheri, who works at a pharmacy, is getting on the intercom when Patti walks into the pharmacy and gives her a grand ovation, introducing her as Killa P to an imaginary audience.

I also kind of related to one of the scenes in the movie, where Patti is interviewing for her second job at a catering company, because the man interviewing her asks where she would like to be in five years, and Patti at first imagines herself in a music video rapping in a hot tub with champagne and money around her, but then in reality she tells the manager that she envisions herself working for the catering company for the next five years. In 2016 I applied for several jobs after college to go towards paying off my student loans, and I landed an interview with a hotel as a front desk person. I was sweating how I was going to answer the interview questions and one of the questions, which is pretty common for job interviews, was “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?” Honestly I wanted to say “playing in a professional orchestra” because that is where I envisioned myself being after making enough financial resources and honing my craft. But I said, “I envision myself still working in the hospitality industry.” Part of me answered this way because I had this fear that if I answered that I wanted to have a different career path in the next five years, then they wouldn’t get me the job. (side note: I ended up being let go after four weeks. Probably for behavioral issues.) I’ve learned from watching this movie though that it really does help to have an income though so that you can still do what you love in your spare time. As much as I tried to quit my day jobs in the past, I realized that I really do like having stability sometimes. I think when I quit my job last year I was really anxious about finding another source of income, and when I played my music or did my writing I realized at some point that I didn’t need to quit my day job to do my passions on the side. I think I’m actually more determined than ever to use whatever time I have after work to practice my writing and work on my music.

This movie also showed me that it’s important to be true to yourself as an artist and not worry about what other people think of you. Even though she spits mad rhymes, Patti is a human being and at times struggles with self-confidence, especially because she faces a lot of bullying (the people in her neighborhood have always called her “Dumbo”). There is one scene where Patti falls in love with this guy named Danny who works at a pizza shop but during a rap battle he ends up insulting her and when she insults him back, he hits her. He does have a slight change of heart when he agrees to buy Patti’s CD, though. He was a jerk though to Patti. Patti also has a crucial moment when she meets her idol, O-Z. Throughout the film, Patti envisions following in O-Z’s footsteps and achieving his level of fame and fortune, but she gets a catering gig where she has to serve at O-Z’s mansion. When the manager asks who can make O-Z’s favorite drink, she makes it, and when she goes to his studio and finds him sitting on his fancy couch she envisions herself rapping for him. But instead she is extremely nervous and loses her confidence when she leaves a CD of her raps and O-Z puts down her dreams and stubs the CD with his cigarette and tells Patti to stick to catering and to give up on her dreams of becoming a rapper. The manager tells her she messed up and fires her, and Patti feels like she is failing at everything. She quits the group and then quits her job at the bar when one of the patrons finds her journal of lyrics and recites them in front of everyone without Patti’s permission, and she tells Jheri that she is giving up on her dreams. Before she meets O-Z, Patti tells Bastard that she wants to be like O-Z, but Bastard tells her to not be easily influenced by O-Z’s prestige and influence because it’s all just about appearances. Patti finally realizes that O-Z didn’t care about Patti’s dreams and was just a really terrible guy who looked down on people even though he was super successful. This reminds me of when I went to a professor’s house to audition for an advanced chamber music ensemble that he was coaching, and I thought very highly of this person, but to be honest at the time I really looked down on myself for working at Starbucks after graduating from this elite college. I thought that if I told my peers and professors from college that I worked at Starbucks, they would look down on me, so I often hesitated when telling them. When I met this professor, I was so nervous and wanted to impress him so badly, but it turns out that I didn’t end up getting into the group and to be honest, when I told him I worked at Starbucks, he told me he thought it was a shame that I graduated from a prestigious college and was working at Starbucks. I found myself losing my confidence and continued to make myself feel ashamed, but after a while, I realized that it doesn’t really matter what others think of your life journey in the long run, because as long as you are growing and maturing from the experiences you are always going to be on the best path for you. Of course, telling myself this everyday is much easier said than done because it’s a lot easier to look at someone else’s career path and think they have it easy, when you don’t even know their journey or what they struggle with every day to pursue that dream. I think what Bastard told Patti about not being swayed by O-Z’s success reminded me of this letter from The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin that I repeatedly turn to called “The Eight Winds.” Nichiren is telling one of his followers, Shijo Kingo, who is a skilled samurai that he shouldn’t let the promises of fame and praise sway his behavior. The four favorable winds are praise, pleasure, prosperity and honor, and the four adverse winds are decline, disgrace, censure and suffering. It’s easy to let other people’s validation or criticisms influence our decision-making or our life paths, and sometimes that praise or criticism comes from a good well-meaning place but other times it doesn’t, so I’ve realized as I’ve been pursuing these creative passions of mine is to not let these external influences prevent me from making art in the most authentic truest way. Bastard encourages Patti to keep being true to herself, regardless of whether people receive their music well or not, and DJ Tips, a famous emcee (played by MC Lyte) ends up playing Patti’s song “PBNJ” on her station one evening. DJ Tips also really loves Patti’s music even though she says it was “rough,” and when they meet at the bar mitzvah Patti is catering at, DJ Tips says to Patti that she can’t believe after 20 years as a DJ she gets a gig playing at someone’s bar mitzvah. This showed me that as musicians, you’re not always going to get that big glamorous gig you want and even after a lot of experience in the field you still may need to take gigs that may not be big and glamorous but are still really part of the job of being a musician. I kind of struggled with this at times because I expected that I would land an orchestra job right after college just because I’ve played for so many years and have all this playing experience in college, but that’s not how it worked. I would call the personnel manager asking if they needed me to sub for any gigs, but I didn’t get a reply and felt discouraged. I ended up playing quite a few gigs for free, and at someone’s Christmas party for some cash. But after talking with other classical musicians I have come to understand that is pretty normal. I had this grand idea that I would be this big name soloist who was going to collaborate with all of these famous artists, and when that dream didn’t come true I felt like I had failed or that this wasn’t the career for me anymore simply because I wasn’t making the progress I wanted. But what I have learned over time, and it’s still a life lesson I need to internalize, is that success is not a one-time thing, like you struggle and then bam, you just become successful after one hit or one CD or one gig. Sure it happens, but for the most part, artists have to keep producing and working on their craft to keep growing in their careers.

Overall, I really loved this movie. I kept jamming to the songs and it was a really encouraging movie for me to watch as a musician and writer who is still struggling to believe in myself and that I can achieve my dreams. Side note: Honestly, while watching this I kept thinking about Lady Sovereign, who is a white British female rapper. I grew up listening to a lot of her music in middle school and even today I found myself playing some of her old hits. Also there is a part in the movie where Patti and Jheri go to a recording studio and I thought the actor who played Swisha looked like Anthony Ramos, and sure enough when I watched the end credits I freaked out and was like, “Oh my gosh, Anthony Ramos from Hamilton was in this movie!!!” I loved watching Hamilton on Disney Plus and I loved Anthony in In the Heights, so seeing him in this movie had me going “Oh my gosh!” Ok, enough rambling. All that to say, if you haven’t seen Patti Cake$ yet I definitely recommend it.

Patti Cake$. 2017. Starring Danielle Macdonald, Siddharth Dhananjay, Bridget Everett, Mamoudou Athie and Cathy Moriarty. Directed by Geremy Jasper. Rated R for language throughout, crude sexual references, some drug use and a brief nude image.