Platinum Strikes Hip-Hop Gold

It's good to see N'Bushe Wright. That is, it's good to see her anywhere, because she's a smart actor who brings grace and sinuous affect to any part she plays. But it's also good to see her on UPN's splashy midseason hip-hop drama, Platinum, where she's got a choice part as Max, crafty, no-nonsense head of Conflict Records. Having inherited the label when her "man went inside," she defends her property and reputation fiercely. Acutely aware of the gender biases in her business, she will not be disrespected.

She makes this clear to her primary competitor, Sweetback Records owner Jackson Rhames (Jason George), during one of those fancy-joint lunch meetings that take up so much time on soaps about backstabbing rich people. On this occasion, Jax has come to discuss Max's recent dispatch of a pair of heavies to beat up on his white boy lawyer partner, David (Steven Pasquale).

What's different here is the tone, the hip-hop industry context and, importantly, the jokes. Platinum has lots of them, thanks to writer John Ridley (Undercover Brother). And so, when Jax protests that his hiring away of Max's star MC, Pharos, is "just business," she comes back: "Negro, please." She then proceeds to read him out for his bad behavior. She pauses only when he reminds her of her own thuglife tactics, noting, "Players like you are making us all look country."

Ouch. Chances are good you won't be hearing this sort of conversation on any other TV series. Nor will you be hearing episodes scored with tracks by Fabolous, Noc-Turnal, Prince, Brian McKnight, Slum Village and the Clipse (though you will hear the Neptunes, everywhere), courtesy of the eclectic Photek. The series' intelligent edginess is exactly what makes Platinum work, its capacity not only to exult in complicated characters operating in a hip, energetic, over-the-top context (this despite and probably because of frequent comparisons to Dallas), but also to get inside the foolishness produced by such a context.

The fact that the series looks closely at the excessive lives and appetites of hip-hop artists and producers is not in itself news; this is on display every day in bling-bling, poolside-hoochies hip-hop music videos. What is refreshing is that the attitude here is resolutely not straight: These characters are as complex and neurotic as any in The Sopranos or Six Feet Under (in fact, it's executive produced by, among others, Six Feet Under's Robert Greenblatt), and some are as campy as those in Kingpin or Dynasty.

Add to this that the scripts are willing to take on current (or at least recent) craziness in the business: bad behaviors, outrageous trends, inflated self-images. Among the more colorful instances in the first two episodes is the very first scene, where Sweetback's arrogant white rapper, Versis (played by white rapper Vishiss, who apparently can take a joke at his own expense), rebuffs his video director's suggestions by shooting him in the ass. Literally. Panic on the video set is followed by the arrival of Jackson's brother and business partner Grady (Sticky Fingaz), who ensures that the incident will be "taken care of" -- he agrees to pay the director, on a stretcher en route to the ambulance, a cool $75,000.

That everyone takes this insanity pretty much in stride is to the point. Platinum is about making money, at anyone else's expense. Versis is merely product, an investment worth "supporting" only until his earning power is played out. And this, coincidentally, is the verge on which Sweetback teeters as the series begins: The white rapper's sales have fallen off, the brothers owe money every which way ("Blacklash," explains Jackson, by way of being off the hook; nah, says a popular black artist, it's the company's fault: "You can't sell a white boy to white people"). So now, the Rhameses are feeling pressured to sell the company to Greystar, a major label headed by creepy Nick Tashjian (Tony Nardi).