Money Merc, American rap star, versed in lyrics talking about big money, drugs, weapons and other rantings, is going through a breakdown of inspiration.
A real anguish of the white page, that his agent sends him to calm in the green mountains Berkshire.
Located three hours drive north of New York, the superb region is full of gently sloping hills, placid cows, hardwoods covering themselves with gold in autumn.
It is there, in a (vast) shack, that Money Merc, surrounded by his recording equipment and other fetishes essential to his well-being, such as a strange reproduction of a David carrying an iPhone, that he will try to compose.
Problem: the rapper is more inclined to hang out at the local Bricorama, to
helping your neighbor kill a pig or chopping up a tree than writing songs.
To the point of wondering if this life would not, in the end, be more made for him.
In video, the trailer for
Down with the king
With
Down with the King
, his first film, awarded the Grand Prize at the Deauville American Film Festival in 2021 and available on VOD since September 12, Diego Ongaro tackles this impulse so symptomatic of the time, this desire to drop everything to reinvent himself.
By highlighting, sometimes with humour, the extremes between which the rapper's desires tend: a need for solitude which is confronted with the need to do concerts and to interact constantly with fans (and therefore trolls) on the networks. social;
the rhythm and the pressure of the profession, which imposes to release pieces very quickly, a thousand leagues from that of nature, animals and the seasons, before which he must bow.
Luxury sneakers that don't mix well with slurry.
Or the fact that we don't improvise as pig skinners.
Full screen
Freddie Gibbs and Bob Tarasuk in
Down with the King
, by Diego Ongaro DR
A man in crisis
But
Down with the king
above all depicts a virility in tension: in the silence and solitude of the forest, Merc (powerfully interpreted by Freddie Gibbs, a rap star with a career punctuated by numerous legal setbacks), can no longer ignore the abyss that was created between his character (who must dominate the
game
, his fans, his team or his competitors) and his extreme fragility, which manifests itself when he falls in love with his neighbor as a teenager.
Or that the shadows of depression hover around him.
Leaving everything to take care of an acre of land and a few animals, a real solution?
Merc wonders, wandering the woods wearing an incongruous fur coat.
Which underlines both his status as a star out of step, as well as that, incredibly touching, of a wounded and lost great beast.
Down with the King
, by Diego Ongaro (1h40).
Available on VOD.