In “The Making of a Hip Hop Globe” Fernandes seeks to find answers to questions like; Can hip hop bring together black youth globally? Can rappers and artists become the voice for a generation, stuck in the “cites” aka the urban space, ghettos, and projects on the outer edge of major global cities? Shaolin wants to be King, but doesn’t even know the possibilities for this newly discovered art form. I really enjoy the scenes in The Get Down where they show the rap battles, the live hip-hop events. The comparison of the DJ as a conductor. He controls all, in this case it’s Shao. In episode five the Get Down Brothers discover that Meylene’s record has an epic get down part and the conductor knows that it’s exactly what the b-boys and b-girls need to jam, break, pop, and battle on the floor. If hip-hop can bring together such large groups of people, why can’t it become transnational?

Another scene that I feel ties in is when Zeke is trying to get to his internship while Shao finds a new place for the crew to practice. “I’m a black man in a white world” was sung over and over in the background. I think this was to draw the viewer’s attention to many things including the horrible racial conflict in social policy, as well as what masculinity means to different characters in the show (and real life), as well as economic status, criminality, and stereotypes. For example, Meylene is constantly referring to Shaolin as a criminal and that Ezekiel isn’t like that. What she fails to see is the almost double life Zeke is trying to live in order to be a King, and please his family and Ms. Green, and survive being young, half Black, half Puerto Rican man in the Bronx.