Issue date: 3/4/08 Section: Features

Jennifer Needleman's '02 and Josh Asen's '02 friendship on College Hill led them to a Moroccan hip-hop festival.

On her first day at Brown in the fall of 1998, Jennifer Needleman '02 befriended Josh Asen '02. At the time, neither could have known that almost a decade later the duo would release their first full-length film as business partners.

Last year, Rizz Productions Inc., a company the two started in 2004, released the documentary, "I Love Hip Hop in Morocco," which follows the development of the first Moroccan music festival in the country's history dedicated entirely to hip-hop. The film "follows the whole story from the earliest conversation with the main characters," Asen said, and has been featured on CNN as well as in film festivals across the globe.

The film begins with Asen issuing a proposal for the music festival to the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco. After securing funding from the government and the Coca-Cola Company, Asen and a number of Moroccan hip-hop artists spend months organizing and preparing for Morocco's first ever hip-hop festival, which shares its title with the film. The documentary focuses heavily on the stories of the artists, who perform and speak in Moroccan Arabic, French and English.

But Asen said the film - and filmmaking in general - was not something the pair considered until after they left College Hill.

After graduating from Brown, Needleman and Asen parted ways temporarily. Asen, who majored in French and music studies, took a job with a hip-hop music label. His interests in hip-hop and the Middle East soon converged on a chance trip to the region.

"I initially went to Morocco just to visit an ex-girlfriend of mine who was studying abroad there," Asen said, adding that he "just stumbled on hip-hop" there. He then grew interested in studying hip-hop as an emerging musical style in Morocco.

On the advice of his then-girlfriend, Asen applied for and won a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 to do research on hip-hop in Morocco. There, he noticed that most hip-hop groups had access only to small clubs and youth centers, and he recognized a demand for more large-scale performance opportunities.

"Many groups had been trying to make a name for themselves for five to 10 years," said Asen. "The groups all had the same idea but were unable to find sponsorship."

Continued...

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