'We Are Freestyle Love Supreme' celebrates rap, love, and creativity
Mashable's entertainment team picks our Watch of the Week, TV shows and movies that you absolutely must add to your list.
Here's a Watch of the Week two-fer for you. I'm recommending a great, new documentary on Hulu, but after you finish you're definitely going to want to see more. And I'm happy to inform you that's an achievable dream.
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme, which Hulu released on July 17, takes a look at an improv troupe with a truly unique twist: Freestyle Love Supreme delivers their comedy and storytelling in the form of freestyle rap. There's beatboxing and party time vibes and no small amount of audience participation.
There's also the small fact that Hamilton and In the Heights creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is a co-founder of the group, alongside Thomas Kail, who directed both of Miranda's Broadway hits, and Anthony Veneziale, the group's effortlessly affable MC.
The documentary, which commendably doesn't hinge its entire premise on Miranda's name recognition, offers up a detailed look at the group's beginning in the early aughts, and then follows their development all the way through to the founding of their training academy and successful Broadway run that kicked off at the end of 2019.
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a showcase for the brilliant on-the-spot creativity that defines each performance.
The documentary works as well as it does due in large part to the generous helping of archival footage it dishes out, and the level of detail that comes with it. Director Andrew Fried spent years following the group and documenting their development, so we're seeing Miranda, Kail, and Chris Jackson, Hamilton's original George Washington, doing their creative thing before mega-fame came a-calling.
In a lot of ways, We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is just a showcase for the brilliant on-the-spot creativity that defines each of the group's performances. Fried is good at getting out of the way and letting the craft speak for itself. Performance footage is interspersed with interviews and archival behind the scenes stuff as well, but all of it exists to uplift the individual members and their unique talents.
Take Utkarsh Ambudkar, who you may remember from his electrifying performance at the Academy Awards show in Feb. 2020. There's a whole segment of the documentary devoted to chronicling his arrival in the group and showcasing his jaw-dropping talents.
Everyone gets a stretch of scenes in the spotlight. The documentary is an informative history lesson that's incredibly watchable thanks to how it weave in performance footage. But it also lifts up the individual members in a way that highlights the group's core messages of love and positivity.
The only real downside is how the necessities of documentary storytelling leaves viewer wanting more on the performance front. Clearly there's more footage of this crew making magic together. And yes, the whole premise of a Freestyle Love Supreme show is to give the audience a fleeting performance that they enjoy in the moment and treasure long after, in part because the specifics can never be fully recreated.
None of that changes the fact that the documentary is a tiny taste of something that feels genuinely special. Thankfully, it's not the only place we can turn for a Freestyle Love Supreme fix while everyone is locked down and live shows feel like a distant memory.
As you'll learn from the documentary, the group had a short-lived series that ran for 11 episodes on the now-defunct Pivot network. I immediately went out and bought the entire season on YouTube after watching the documentary.
It's great. Certainly more produced and polished than a live set would be. There are brief sketches informed by (and riffing on) things that happen during the live stage moments. The performances themselves are also no doubt trimmed down to make them fit into each 30-minute episode.
The series is nonetheless a worthy showcase of what Freestyle Love Supreme is all about. Especially after watching the documentary and getting a sense of each performance's basic format and recurring improv games. Fried's in-depth history lesson left me wanting more and the series serves it up.
Look for We Are Freestyle Love Supreme on Hulu and the Pivot TV series on YouTube or Amazon.
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Topics Hulu
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
