I saw through nearly everything in “One the Come Up”, a rather conventional mix of rap and coming-of-age drama. This is so predictable and contrived in terms of story and characters that I could easily guess each plot turn it was about to make, and it is also rather messy and superficial in how it handles several serious social issues. Above all, those rap songs in the film are not particularly catchy in my inconsequential opinion, and it is sometimes hard to believe in how talented its young heroine is.

Newcomer Jamila C. Gray plays Bri Jackson, a 16-year-old African American girl living in one slum neighborhood. Due to her father’s early death and her mother’s drug addiction problem, her childhood was pretty unhappy as shown from the opening scene, but she has been determined to become a rapper as good as her father was right before his unfortunate death, and we later see her attending a local rap battle competition along with her aunt Pooh (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). At first, Bri looks very confident on the surface, but, not so surprisingly, she gets frozen right from the first round, and she certainly feels quite humiliated as running away from the competition.

However, of course, Bri subsequently comes to show more of her talent in her next attempt, and that draws the attention of an influential producer named Supreme (Method Man), who incidentally worked once with her father before his death and willingly gives her an offer she cannot easily refuse. Mainly because her family can be evicted from their residence at any point, Bri comes to accept his offer, and she breaks up with her aunt, who has been her promoter/would-be producer and is surely disappointed with her niece’s decision.

What follows next is Bri experiencing the bright and dark sides of rap music business. Along with her two close friends, she goes to Atlanta, Georgia for what may be her first big break, and she soon finds herself making her first official single at a local recording studio under Supreme’s guidance. Unfortunately, her sincere personal pieces do not impress Supreme and others much, so she agrees to do something much more aggressive as advised by Supreme, though the movie does not fully present it to us because, well it is rated PG-13.

When that aggressive rap song makes a hit as expected by Supreme, it looks like Bri is going to be a new local star just like her father, and she is particularly delighted to take care of her family’s current financial problem, but, as many of you have already guessed, there comes a big problem. While getting more popular day by day, her song also becomes quite controversial due to its harsh and violent words, and we see how that song galvanizes her schoolmates when they protest for how she was brutally and unjustly handled by two school security guards early in the story. To make matters worse, her song displeases certain local criminals, and she inevitably comes to experience a traumatizing incident as a result.

However, the screenplay by Kay Oyegun, which is based on the novel of the same name by Angie Thomas, looks like being too afraid of delving more into its heroine’s problems and resulting conflicts. We only hear about what that controversial song of hers is about, so we do not get the full understanding of how it causes a lot of troubles in public, while only expected to side with her position to the end. In addition, the movie only comes to scratch the surface in case of her school problem, and this is further exacerbated by her rather passive attitude. She seems traumatized a lot by those two mean school security guards, but she is not particularly willing to express her trauma and anger on the incident, and she hesitates even when many of her schoolmates come forward for demanding the justice for her.

Above all, I could not help but notice how the soundtrack is not strong enough to linger on my mind at least for a while. Sure, what is performed during the expected climactic scene is fairly good enough to make the scene a bit exciting, but the rest of the rap songs in the soundtrack do not excite me that much on the whole, and that makes the artificial absence of Bri’s controversial hit in the movie all the more glaring.

Nevertheless, Gray’s earnest lead performance manages to hold the center as required, though she is sometimes eclipsed by several showier supporting performers around her. While Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who would advance more with her Oscar-winning supporting turn in “The Holdovers” (2023), quickly draws our attention, Sanna Lathan, who also directed the film (This is her first feature film, by the way), brings some sincerity and gravitas to the story as Bri’s flawed but caring mother. In case of Mike Epps and Method Man, they dutifully fill their flatly sleazy supporting roles, but the movie does not utilize their presence and talent much, and that is another disappointment in the film.

In conclusion, “On the Come Up” tries to do its own stuffs via its young female lead character, but the result is not satisfying enough to hold my attention to the end, and my mind often went to some other better rap music movies out there during my viewing. While “8 Mile” (2002) will immediately come to your mind, I also recommend “Bodied” (2017), which provides a series of genuinely electrifying (and disturbing) rap battle moments with some thought-provoking materials. These two movies are much more interesting in terms of storytelling as well as music, and I think you should spend your time on either of them instead.