April 19: Record Store Day — Write about a movie starring a musician.

Ah, 1993.

The first movie of Ted Demme (The Ref, Beautiful Girls, Blow), Who’s the Man? unites Yo! MTV Raps hosts Doctor Dré and Ed Lover as barber shop employees turned cops, working for Sergeant Cooper (Dennis Leary, amazing). While they try and become actually decent police officers, their former barbershop boss Nick (Jim Moody) is killed by a developer named Demetrius (Richard Bright) and they get on the case.

If you were a hip hop artist in 1993, chances are you are in this. Guru, Ice-T, B-Real, Apache (“Gangsta Bitch,” anyone?), Ashanti, Bushwhick Bill (“My hands were all bloody from punchin’ on the concrete”), Busta Rhymes (who somehow was in a Halloween movie and said, “Looking a little crispy over there, Mikey, like a fried chicken motherfucker. May he never, ever rest in peace.”), Del the Funkee Homosapien, DJ Lethal, Eric B., Everlast, Fab 5 Freddy, Flavor Flav, Heavy D, House of Pain, Humpty Hump (“Like Anita, I’m givin’ you the best that I’ve got”), Kid Capri, Kriss Kross, Kool G Rap, Melle Mel, Pete Rock, Phife Dawg, Queen Latifah, Run D.M.C., Yo-Yo and even Kurt Loder and Karen Duffy from MTV as a hitman and a cop.

Plus, the soundtrack has “Party and Bullshit” by Notorious B.I.G. on it — his first single — and “Hittin’ Switches”by Erick Sermon.

There are sadly few rapper movies these days. Between this and Tougher Than Leather — plus the movies of the Fat Boys and Kid ‘n Play — times were different once.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.