IT ALL BEGINS with Layzie Bone, in an aprés Bone Thugs gig in a Nevada hotel room, surrounded by DJ Dreghost and a host of friends. It’s his 32nd birthday, but he’s offering service instead of just reveling in the pleasure. The trance chant comes to him from a laptop computer, playing DJ Dreghost’s banging beats, as he opens the pages and starts putting it down straight:
Blessed are you who hear the word of God ...And follow it.
The room of voices hollering "Blessed Are You!" straight back; not like some church on Sunday morning-but like the late night recognition of the truth being spoken at a party and everybody's done getting lit up at the same time. He’s reading some words, right from the streets of 2000 years ago, spoken by a true revolutionary to a people in bondage; from the heart of his life as a former gang banger to his life now as a hip hop superstar. Layzie Bone sees a Greater Hand directing him and the lives of the rest of Bone Thugs -N-Harmony. He lays down those words because he knows they’re the truth, from the dawn of the 21st century in the hip hop game to the truth that lies out in the wilderness of the world, be it on a corner, in an alley, or in a room full of 20,000 people hanging on every word.
A gritty realistic view, straight from the Streets, The Wordz Project chronicles the two-year experience of creating the music project, Wordz from the Street, where street rappers and rap stars were asked to spit the words of Christ to hip-hop beats, any way they wanted to. The project took its form from Cantelon’s book, The Words, where the words of Christ are edited together without the rest of the intervening text. A year earlier, a similar concept using The Words inspired Rickie Lee Jones’s album, The Sermon on Exhibition Boulevard, to rave reviews world-wide.
Featuring visionary Michael Bernard Beckwith (The Secret), once a street kid himself, his words of wisdom anchors and validates the spiritual experiences expressed by the Grammy-winning Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Bigg Slice, Pat's Justice, Skim, Blaxmyth, Lil' Drawz, Oblivion, The Last Poets, Mr. Mixx (2 Live Crew), Yo Yo and others. The Wordz Project reveals the personal behind the scenes moments you won’t find on MTV or BET.
Author/producer Lee Cantelon and producer/director Richard Shaw manage to penetrate an environment often reserved only for a select few and bring it to the screen.
It’s hard core, from Bigg Slice’s brush with death in Watts and his relationship as car designer for Snoop Dogg, to street rapper Oblivion and his opportunity to be recognized by one of the most respected fathers of rap, Abiodun Oyewole (The Last Poets) all the way to Flesh’s release from prison and the reunification of the Bone Thugs -N- Harmony -- a fitting end to the saga and what a million fans have been waiting for.
The Wordz Project and the Wordz from the Street reflect the new church, the church of the street, which is the church of the heart.
