The 30 Best Movie Performances by Rappers

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4. Queen Latifah in Set It Off (1996)

Director F. Gary Gray’s Los Angeles-set heist drama builds chaos and tension around a group of friends who plan an ill-conceived bank robbery as a means to escape violence and living check-to-check. In a film with three other powerhouses—Jada Pinkett Smith (Stony), Vivica A. Fox (Francesca), and Kimberly Elise (T.T.)—Latifah excels as Cleopatra Sims, an unhinged, horny lesbian who embodies much of the crew’s desperation. At one point, she threatens Stony with a gun; at another, she consoles Stony after her brother’s death. You see their plan deteriorating the whole way through; there’s simply no way they’ll get away with it. It ends in tragedy when Cleo, on the run from cops, drives through a blaze of gunshots in sacrifice for her friends. Latifah goes above and beyond to sell the heartbreak, convulsing her body as she’s struck with bullets. It’s a sleeper pick for one of cinema’s most emotional death scenes. –Clover Hope

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3. DMX in Belly (1998)

Belly is the type of visually gaudy presentation you’d expect from a director whose signature music-video aesthetic is a fish-eye lens. By all accounts, Hype Williams’ 1998 magnum opus—the first and only feature he’s ever made—was a beautiful disaster. Nearly everyone involved came ill-prepared for a production that was rife with budget issues. But it was also the perfect proving ground for DMX, a former Yonkers stickup kid who’d recently rose to fame off a pair of disruptively good back-to-back albums that year. In Belly, DMX inhabits the role of spiritual drug dealer Tommy opposite Nas, who recites lines as if he’s still in a table read. Comparatively, DMX looks like a Training Day Denzel—dripping with aggression, and, apparently, lots of baby oil. Tommy is dangerous and blunt, the sort of criminal who’ll blast off errant gunshots while making an underling strip naked. When Tommy gets prophetic and says things like, “When it rains, niggas get wet,” it’s hard to tell where the actor ends and the character begins. –Clover Hope

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2. Ice Cube in Boyz N the Hood (1991)

There were rappers in movies before Boyz N the Hood, but none as three-dimensional as Ice Cube’s turn as Doughboy. Writer-director John Singleton lays out Doughboy’s hopelessness without wallowing in the misery: His mother views him as a lost cause, and he has few dreams of his own. Instead, he lives vicariously through his college-bound football star brother Ricky (Morris Chestnut), whose killing seems to deflate Doughboy’s own will to live. Cube’s final conversation with Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Tre—a realization that the outside world doesn’t give a shit what happens to them—is as moving as any scene featuring a rapper to date. –Alphonse Pierre

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1. 2Pac in Juice (1992)

It takes just once glance into Tupac’s eyes to know that Ernest Dickerson’s Harlem-set opus Juice isn’t your typical coming-of-age story. As Tupac’s character stares at his zoned-out father in the opening minutes, his background immediately becomes clear: He comes from a broken home, and his situation has grown from sadness to anger and hopelessness. After Bishop gets his hands on a gun and begins to turn on his friends, the movie takes on the beats of a slasher flick. But his loneliness is the engine of it all. The locker-room scene captures Pac at his best: When Omar Epps’ Q closes the door and Bishop is there waiting with the coldest “What’s up?” you’ll ever hear, the moment is chilling—not just because he’s lost it, but because you can see how far his pain has pushed him. –Alphonse Pierre

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