The 10 Best Music Films at Sundance 2012

Over the last two years, Ice-T traveled the country, piecing together this portrait of hip-hop through interviews with many of the genre’s biggest stars: Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Nas and Mos Def all sit down with the iconic MC for this feature-length documentary on hip-hop’s evolution. Ice-T, who’s spent the better part of the past two decades as an actor, always envisioned himself as a director, and thought keeping his debut project close to the chest would make for a smooth jump behind the lens. "I felt like [hip-hop] would be the first place to start," he says. On film, every rapper tells a different tale, but the message is unified: Hip-hop was their saving grace. And while Ice-T says he wasn’t aiming to spread a particular "agenda," he couldn’t deny his findings. "When every artist says [hip-hop] saved my life," he says, "it’s an honest fact."