Status Ain't Hood

The Village Voice: Status Ain't Hood: "Dave Chappelle's Block Party may be the ultimate triumph of the Okayplayer aesthetic, the warmest, gooiest, most feelgood concert doc I've seen this side of Fade to Black, though I should probably go ahead and rent The Last Waltz before I start throwing around superlatives like that. If you've read ?uestlove's mammoth OKP post from immediately after the show (someone more internet-savvy will have to help me find it again), you know that the show itself wasn't the hazy freeform utopia you see in the movie; there was stress about Kanye finishing his set in time to jump on a plane and open up for Usher somewhere, about Jill Scott and Erykah Badu performing back-to-back, about whether the Fugees thing would actually happen as planned. If you were wasting all your time on music blogs around the time the show actually took place, you also know that the audience was vetted and focus-grouped to keep it from being as overwhelmingly white as it would've been otherwise. None of that comes through onscreen, though; instead, we see a group of occasionally genius and perpetually like-minded artists performing for a supremely amped and appreciative crowd, everything flowing effortlessly from one segment to the next, everyone onscreen describing the day as one of the happiest in their lives, which maybe it was. And we also get Chappelle, whose stoner drawl and loping, graceful charisma hold the whole thing together beautifully. In "