What Is “Hip-Hop Montage,” and Why Do Young People Prefer It?

When we mention hip-hop, what usually comes to mind first is a strong beat, rapid-fire rap, or even violent lyrics—street culture laden with villainous symbols. When this culture collides with the language of cinema, it produces a trendy, avant-garde editing style known as hip-hop montage.

Hip-hop montage was formally created and proposed by director Darren Aronofsky. Although earlier films—such as 1984’s Beat Street and 1989’s Do the Right Thing—had already experimented with combining hip-hop music and narrative in film, those attempts weren’t fully developed: they had hip-hop, but not montage. It wasn’t until Aronofsky appeared on the scene that things changed. In his debut feature Pi, he showed the embryonic form of this style. Even though the film has nothing to do with hip-hop culture in terms of subject matter, the shaky camera, fragmented editing, extreme close-ups, and eerie score all pierce straight into the characters’ inner worlds. At that stage, there was montage, but no hip-hop.

It was only with 2000’s Requiem for a Dream that the hip-hop montage style fully matured. Formally, it consists of rapidly linked sequences of short shots. At the same time, it relies on sound to create a strong sense of rhythm; that rhythmic groove is then made to fit the narrative. Finally, it develops a critical edge to convey emotion or reflect the film’s theme—precisely the essence of hip-hop rap.

Requiem for a Dream doesn’t just use this technique in a few isolated segments; the style unifies the entire film. Even in sections without music, the rhythm is always present. From this work we can also see that hip-hop montage demands extremely careful and constantly changing sound design. Sometimes various sound effects are arranged like a patterned sequence of notes to create a melody. To generate groove, it also relies on repeating shots and repeating sounds; at other times, it needs a kind of “accent” to disrupt the melody and create a syncopated, jumping feel. Sometimes it calls for different kinds of asynchronous sound—editing where sound and image do not match—to create offbeats that hint at chaos. So even though hip-hop montage can look messy in terms of editing, the emotions it conveys are remarkably clear. This is why what Aronofsky created is not a superficial exercise of simply cutting to a hip-hop soundtrack. Cutting on the beat can be just a surface effect; underneath, the technique is grounded in the narrative core of hip-hop rap itself.

However, Aronofsky’s hip-hop montage can be excessively violent and despairing—yet hip-hop doesn’t only live in the underground; it also has a positive, uplifting side. Another director who has carried this technique forward is Edgar Wright. In his films, music and rhythmic storytelling are integrated even more fluidly. For example, in Baby Driver, the action design and shot editing achieve a fully “on-beat” narrative effect. Unlike Aronofsky’s darkness, Wright applies hip-hop montage to his brand of comedy. Take the opening of Hot Fuzz: rich sound effects, the use of voice-over, and an even faster cutting pace create a style of storytelling that more closely resembles hip-hop rap. With more nuanced character building, he conveys the protagonist’s heroic past in a very short time, yet ends the montage with a comedic twist. Similar techniques can be found throughout Wright’s work.

The main feature of hip-hop montage is that it can convey a clear theme and a dense amount of information within the length of a single song, while allowing for very flexible editing—it can be as flashy and fast as a music video. This is exactly why it is especially popular among young audiences. At the same time, it demands that the editor organize massive amounts of footage into a coherent groove, which undeniably requires very strong technical skill.