Bodied

Bodied (2018) is a battle-rap satire you can watch online on iFILM. Director Joseph Khan, known for music videos with Eminem and Taylor Swift, turns a graduate thesis into a 120-minute comedy-drama that keeps cutting deeper than it looks.

Adam Merkin is a white Berkeley grad student obsessed with Black rap culture. He talks his dean into letting him write about battle rap, then walks into an underground bar to interview his idol Behn Grymm. One thing leads to another and the soft-spoken academic gets pulled onto the mic himself. Turns out he has a vicious gift for the low blow. The more he wins, the louder the outrage grows, because every clever line lands on someone's race, body or background.

Calum Worthy plays a man losing himself between campus lectures about free speech and a stage where speech actually wounds. Khan refuses to hand you a tidy verdict on where art ends and cruelty begins. Eminem produced it, which tells you the bars are real. Watch it if you like comedy that aims straight at the nerve. Stream Bodied (2018) online on iFILM.