Did You Catch That ‘The Get Down’ Is Structured Narratively Like A Hip Hop Song?

In the world of Netflix’s The Get Down, style is substance. The show’s bold colors, quick cuts, invasive soundtrack, and unique narrative quirks (i.e. MC Books’s narrations, cartoon interstitials, etc) are all celebratory nods to hip hop culture. More than that, The Get Down’s actual structure is a stylistic nod to its subject matter. The Get Down is the only show on television narratively structured to mirror a classic hip hop album. But what you might not have noticed is that The Get Down‘s most emotionally potent scenes are arranged precisely like a hip hop track.
What do I mean? Well, first let’s see how the show’s hero, Zeke (Justice Smith), explains the fundamentals of hip hop to Claudia Gunns (Julia Garner) towards the end of Part II, Episode 1, “Unfold Your Own Myth”:

Zeke: You’re talking stripped-down chords, right? The drums without the vocals — that’s the part I like. ‘Cause then my DJ, he plays the same record on two different turntables. First one. And then again…But Shaolin plays the get down part on one record, right? And right about when it’s about to end he goes back to the other record, and then back again. And then again, and then again, and again, to make one long get down part that never ends.

Claudia: And that’s cool because…?

Zeke: ‘Cause you can dance to it. And I can talk over it.

What he’s describing here is how a traditional hip hop song is married together. Twin records are played on side-by-side turntables — the samples providing a steady beat – while an MC or singer provides vocals. This is also an apt way of describing how some of the biggest moments in The Get Down come together. The story often skips quickly, playfully, and sometimes a little too abruptly between two or more scenes where major narrative moments are unfolding. Other shows layer scenes like this — toggling back and forth between storylines — but The Get Down turns it into an art. It lets the plot crescendo with intersecting scenes that are ostensibly the same thing but with different characters in different locations. Occasionally a third scene breaks with the thematic thrust to push a deeper emotional point across. A prime example? The series of three interwoven scenes that this very exchange between Zeke and Claudia comes from.

In one corner, you’ve got Zeke finding himself alone in Mr. Gunns’s office with his flirty daughter Claudia. Zeke is still smarting from Mylene (Herizen Guardiola) announcing that she’s single on TV and is letting himself get lost in the moment (and in a haze of pot) with the rich girl. Back in the neighborhood, Mylene’s long-suffering mother (Zabryna Guevara) is alone in the apartment after hours with Papa Fuerte (Jimmy Smits). She offers him water and lets him vent about the stress in his life. The two scenes start slowly, quietly. Their similarities are subtle until they are overt: the couples finally left alone, the weary men wearing suits, the women in their smart blouses and skirts. The sexual tension between both couples finally begins to boil over as we cut to a third story: Mylene’s.

As both of Mylene’s emotional rocks toy with infidelity, we see her at her Tiger Beat shoot. She’s stewing about Zeke’s absence in the very moment she first gets pushed into the trappings of a disco sex goddess. She is in the costume of a diva and non-stop gushing emotion. She is providing a lyrical emotional counterweight to “the get down” of those two seesawing scenes about temptation. In short, she is the voice of heartbreak over the thumping of base human desires.
This taut scene structure hooks the viewer and scoops them along emotionally the same way a perfectly composed hip hop song would. But The Get Down isn’t content to just play with visual editing in these moments. There are often echoes of all the scenes in question playing out in the soundtrack. Different scenes start with different beats. Dialogue from one setting spills over into the next, looping the characters together. In this particular scene, Mylene’s worried inner dialogue begins to echo over the beat. It speeds up along with the fast visual cuts until after a crescendo…it drops. And Zeke remembers his promise to her.

This isn’t the only time The Get Down uses this device. Another major scene that springs to mind is the show’s jaw-dropping meditation on power and corruption in Part I, Episode 6, “Raise Your Words, Not Your Voice.” In that episode, we see three characters forced to confront the lengths to which they will go to seize power — all the while being manipulated by someone else. There it was Zeke being interviewed by Mr. Gunns, Fat Annie pushing Shaolin to make his first kill, and Leslie Lesgold raping Jackie Moreno. The three scenes are cut into each other in a way that only heightens the ferocity of each individual storyline.
The Get Down is an incredibly dense show. Every moment comes from an avalanche of influences — musical, cultural, historical, cinematic, and mythologic. This clever scene device is just one of the many ways this show is an ode to artistic experimentation. In fact, each episode is chock full of winks and nods to other films, to major musical moments, and even to history. Baz Luhrmann and his team didn’t just create a charming television show — they built one by using the concept of “sampling” in an innovative cross-media way.

Stream The Get Down on Netflix