NEW YORK – A$AP Rocky had no idea Denzel Washington was going to throw Nas at him.
Midway through Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” a New York riff on Akira Kurosawa’s “High to Low,” wealthy music executive David King (Washington) has cornered aspiring rapper Yung Felon (Rocky) after he tried to kidnap King's son. They meet in a music studio. A rap battle ensues.
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While the scene was scripted, much of what Washington freestyled — mixing in lines from Nas, Tupac, DMX and others — startled his professional rapper co-star.
“I’m like: How does this man know who Moneybagg Yo is?” Rocky says, sitting alongside Washington.
“And I’m 70,” Washington says with a grin.
“Highest 2 Lowest,” which A24 releases in theaters Friday, two weeks before it lands on Apple TV+, is a heist thriller that hits hardest when Washington and Rocky are going at it. Washington, o ne of the mightiest of living actors, is, of course, an imposing presence. Even though Rocky might usually have the upper hand in the studio, he's just beginning to prove himself as an actor.
“Denzel is such a powerful force. Not a derogatory term, but he’s a beast,” Lee said. “Rocky is from Harlem, uptown. So I knew that he’s not going to punk out. He’s going to stand there, feet planted to the ground, as a heavyweight fight, blow to blow to blow. If you got somebody who don’t got it, Denzel is going to slaughter them. SLAUGHTER.”
But in “Highest 2 Lowest,” Rocky proves that he can go toe-to-toe with a titan like Washington. In the annals of movie face-offs between the veteran and the up-and-comer, the scene is a riveting showdown. Not that Rocky is claiming victory.
“I had to go with the flow with him,” Rocky says. “You’ve got to realize this guy’s a pro. He’s a wordsmith for real. It’s not a joke. So when he went, I caught his drift. But I lost a rap battle to this man. And I’m a professional f------ rapper.”
With that Washington roars and slams the table. “But I’m using other people’s material,” he adds. “And I’ve been practicing.”
“It doesn’t matter,” replies Rocky. “I lost, man. It’s unfortunate that that’s my profession in real life.”
Washington's rapping skills
But as he showed in a recent interview, Washington’s envy for his co-star’s day job is more than for show. Washington’s hip-hop affection runs deep. Asked how he approached the big scene with Rocky, Washington takes out his phone and begins playing Nas’ “N.Y. State of Mind” and raps along: “I keep some E&J, sittin’ bent up in the stairway.”
“All right, would you ever in a million years expect the Denzel Washington to be able to recite classic quotes and lines from hip-hop?” exclaims Rocky.
But Washington was just getting started. He grandly spat a verse of DMX (“Lucky that you breathing, but you dead from the waist down”), a few bars of Outkast (“Yes, we done come along way like them slim-ass cigarettes”) and cackled joyfully at a line from Samara Cyn and Smino’s “Brand New Teeth”: “Spent my rent money on these brand-new teeth.”
“For me on the outside looking in, it was like this guy was Method acting,” Rocky says. “He was just being himself. He should have been a rapper.”
Washington shakes his head. “No, I play one on TV.”
Yet Washington has as much facility with Wizkid as he does Shakespeare or August Wilson. Pushed to explain his mentality going into the scene, Washington still demurs.
“I can’t, man. I don’t have one,” he says. “I just flow. I can’t tell you what I’m going to do, because I don’t know. I never know how it’s going to go. I don’t plan. But I have been practicing for a long time, and nobody knew! I never had the platform.”
‘I’m still on top'
In “Highest 2 Lowest,” Lee — in his fifth film with Washington — surveys a changing entertainment industry. Washington’s once supreme music executive is losing his grip on what sells — and what sells matters less than how many followers someone has. The movie weaves in some of Lee’s other obsessions — the New York Yankees; New York, itself — but it casts the moral questions of Kurosawa’s classic against a media landscape where authenticity can be hard to find.
Asked if he identified with his character’s quandary, Washington pauses to consider the question.
“If I had an ego, I’d say no, because I’m still on top,” says Washington. “And I’m getting better.”
Rocky, though, sees some of himself in Yung Felon. It's a moniker Rocky, himself, suggested replace the scripted name, MC Microphone Checka. Rocky, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, shot “Highest 2 Lowest” in the run-up to his recent trial over a 2021 incident in which Rocky was accused of firing a gun at Terell Ephron, a former friend and collaborator known as A$AP Relli. Rocky was found not guilty in February on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
The verdict gave Rocky a new lease on life just as his film career might be taking off. He also co-stars in the upcoming “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a hit at Sundance. Meanwhile, he's preparing his long-awaited fourth album, “Don’t Be Dumb.”
Who are ‘the new rappers’?
For Rocky, the music industry backdrop of “Highest 2 Lowest” rings true. Music sales, he notes, are way down. Artificial intelligence is taking over.
“They’ve got to figure out how to regulate it,” Rocky says. “People in music are already doing it. Not to put nobody on the spot, there are people with No. 1 records and it’s not even them. It’s not even their voice on the track.”
“This is a smart kid here,” says Washington.
But Washington is resistant. “People trying to sound like me don’t sound like me, to me,” he says, doubting artificial intelligence's potential. He peppers Rocky with questions. Rocky, 36, already sounds like an old-timer.
“The kids, they don’t want to be rappers anymore,” Rocky says. “They don’t want to be ballers. They want to be streamers. It’s basically another word for ‘YouTuber.’ They all want to be YouTubers, I promise you.”
Washington: “How will they make money doing that?”
Rocky: “They make all the money now.”
Washington: “From what? What do they do? Without the talent, without the thing to go see…”
Rocky: “What’s the substance? That’s what I’m saying is the big question. The performers are obsolete. Nobody’s watching. Nobody cares. They’d rather watch an 18-year-old with millions of viewers open up a bag of chips and tell you how good it is. These guys are the new rappers.”
But for now, at least in “Highest 2 Lowest,” Rocky and Washington are still the performers. They’re the rappers, even the two-time Oscar winner. Rocky, who grew up watching Washington in “Malcolm X,” can hardly believe it.
“He gives you that confidence he walks around with,” Rocky says. “A lot of times, people tell me that I embody this self-confidence — I see it all in him. Just him embracing me, them embracing me, it was so chill. I waited my whole life for this.”
“Me too!” bellows Washington, with a laugh. “And that’s the truth! I’ve been a closet rapper for 40 years. Finally I get the chance.”