Among the many issues bogging down Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq is its weak grasp of Chicago hip-hop. Like gun violence and its roots, hip-hop takes a backseat to Lee’s sex satire; this weakness might not be such an issue, except that music is central to the vision of the the city that Lee tried to capture, the title character is an aspiring rapper, and the film’s name came from the local hip-hop scene.
E.C. Illa has been an integral part of Chicago hip-hop since the early 90s, and in a scene that constantly shifts focus between the west and south sides, he’s held it down for the “north pole.” One sequence in the film takes place in the Tip CDs & Tapes, the defunct north-side hip-hop shop that E.C. Illa ran in the aughts. The store’s appearance is a throwaway detail—the film is mostly about a couple of roughnecks trying to hit it big selling syrup from Houston to gangs along Western Avenue—but it’s a telling one.
