Immortal To 'Slam' With Hip-Hop Heavies

08/26/1998 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(8/26/98, 2 p.m. PDT) - Immortal Records has emerged victorious in the battle to release the soundtrack to Slam, 1998's winner of both the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Tracks by Pras, Q-Tip, Brand Nubian, Dead Prez, Flipmode Squad featuring Busta Rhymes, KRS-One and new Bad Boy signing Black Rob will be included on the Oct. 13 release. There will also be collaborations by Big Punisher with Next; Ol' Dirty Bastard (a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus) with Coolio; and Goodie Mob with Esthero. The music will be juxtaposed with interjections by the film's poets.

"It seemed like every hip-hop label was interested in working with us," says the film's director, Mark Levin. "Music companies jumped on much quicker than film people. We just had to meet with everyone until we could find someone on the same wavelength as us. Someone who knew how to capture the plot's essence in music."

The film is a gritty look at a man who is jailed on drug charges and deals with the hopeless situation through poetry slams. It was picked up by Trimark Pictures for $2.5 million after Sundance and will hit theatres in October.

"Slams are a meeting ground between poetry, spoken-word and hip-hop," Levin says. "It is only natural that the soundtrack encompass both those elements."

-- Midnight Jones, Los Angeles