Enter the Babylon System

A docu-style investigation of our fascination with the gun, from the perspective of the hip-hop generation. The 2003 shooting death of Toronto community-centre worker Kempton Howard put the spotlight on hip hop’s fixation with guns. Media and police soon blamed rap music and its tales of gang life on bullet-ridden US streets for the rising use of firearms in Canadian crime. Were these songs artful accounts of a terrible truth, or a self-fulfilling prophecy? Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce