Shakespeare Was the First Rapper: Why I Took Macbeth to 1990s Compton
Page Kennedy on writing, directing, and starring in Macbeth in Compton, his short that puts Shakespeare's own words in a world Black audiences actually care about.
When I first picked up Shakespeare, I couldn't stand it. I tried to read the first paragraph of A Midsummer Night's Dream in community college and told my professor straight up, I don't understand this. He told me, "You should love Shakespeare, he was like the first rapper." I'm a rapper. That unlocked it. Then I saw Baz Luhrmann's (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!) Romeo and Juliet and it all made sense, because he put the play in a modern world I understood. I wanted to give that same gift to a Black audience.
That's Macbeth in Compton. I wanted to introduce Black people to Shakespeare by putting him together with hip-hop culture and placing it in a world we actually care about. Hip-hop and Shakespeare are the two greatest literatures we have.
Why Compton? My favorite era of rap came out of LA in the '90s. I'm a huge fan of Ice Cube (Boyz n the Hood, Friday), N.W.A., Eazy-E, that whole world. This film is my love letter to them.
My cast is not rapping Shakespeare. The dialogue is Shakespeare's own text. The only rap in the film is Lady Macbeth's verse, and I wrote that one.
The story still hits because ambition hasn't changed. Lady M has even more ambition than Mac does. She will burn the world down to get what she wants, she knows he doesn't have that in him, so she becomes the puppet master. She positions him to be the CEO of the company, not just a rapper on it.
I wrote it, I directed it, and I played Mac. I'd been on plenty of big sets, but always as an actor. Day one of this one, I walked on and all of those people showed up for something I put together. Special, man. I had an exact blueprint of what I wanted,, plus two amazing producers, Josie Hull (Cookbook for Southern Housewives) and Casey Zeman (Roberta's Rules), who sat in those meetings with me until we figured out how to make it happen. What you see on screen is exactly what I wanted.
I shoot in one-shots. From the moment you meet Lady M, it's one continuous shot, all the way until we transition into the green section. The green section is shot music-video style. The red section is all one shot. I didn't want people to have the chance to second-screen this. A one shot forces you to pay attention, and it's the closest thing we have to theater on screen.
Then there's the cast. Russell Hornsby (Fences, The Hate U Give) plays Dunc. He came out of theater school, and on set he told me messing with the Bard and flipping it on its head was fun. Candice Renée (Tyler Perry's Bruh, Insecure) plays Lady M. She had taken Shakespeare classes on purpose in college, then had to shelve her Shakespeare dreams like a lot of actors do. She called this a dream come true. And she had never rapped before. She went on to win Best Actress at BronzeLens.
We were an Official Selection at BronzeLens 2026, and we played the Pan African Film Festival 2026, the Las Vegas Black Film Festival 2026, Dances With Films LA 2026, Indie Night 2026, and Indie Short Fest 2025, and we got an Honorable Mention at Berlin Kiez 2025.
This isn't my first time either. I did Othello first, then Richard III, and each one got bigger. Macbeth in Compton is the subtitle. The full title is Tales from the Bard, and this isn't a one-off. I want to do Richard III in Mississippi. Why not a Midsummer Night's Dream in a horror world? Shakespeare still talks about betrayal, murder, sex, love. All of that still matters now.
What I learned is what I want out of it. I want young Black kids to think it's dope to have a wide vocabulary. I want them to express themselves some way other than violence. If people learn Shakespeare, they love deeper and they're more compassionate. All we have to do is take him from being quaint and put him in a zeitgeist Black people care about. When I'm gone, I want to be the guy who brought us Shakespeare where we love it.
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