This Is the Life

Ava DuVernay's first feature-length film documents the Good Life Café, a health-food shop in South Central Los Angeles whose Thursday open-mic nights became a proving ground for alternative hip-hop from the late 1980s. Artists including Freestyle Fellowship and members of Jurassic 5 came up there.

DuVernay was part of that scene herself, and the film is affectionate and well informed. It's a history of a West Coast movement that valued lyricism and community over sales, told by the people who built it.