Come And Learn About 'The Great Hip Hop Hoax' [Trailer]

When Sony signed up the ‘hot talent’ that was Silibil n Brains, they thought they’d struck a veritable goldmine. Little did they know that Silibil n Brains weren’t tour buddies with Eminem; they weren’t best friends with Madonna and they certainly weren’t the next Beastie Boys.

No, they were in fact two regular lads from Dundee in Scotland, who, beleaguered and dismayed by their music industry snub, decided to adopt these fake personas. The UK had called them “rapping Proclaimers” – ‘fine then’ they said, ‘we’ll just take over America instead’.

And so Silibil and Brains was born. But it wouldn’t last forever. After making a splash in America – their accents honed – they disappeared. The Great Hip Hop Hoax tells the story of their fake lives, from the highs of deception to the lows of the cold hard truths they would eventually face.

“I’d been away in Valencia, and was back home, lying in bed, catching up with all the weekend’s newspapers. I read about the hoax and thought, “I’m going to make a film about this,” said the documentary’s director, Jeanie Finla to Leftlion.co.uk.

Check out the Great Hip Hop Hoax trailer

“There are levels and layers of storytelling in every industry: Lana Del Ray is described as being as fake as her lips, and Alice Cooper is a Republican that plays golf at the weekend. The reason I wanted to make a film about them was that what they did was extraordinary, it wasn’t a logical reaction to rejection.”

The film debuted at SXSW, which Finlay described as “a bit mental” and “a crazy and insane experience”. The critics met it with generally favourable reviews, although it has, by some, been accused of over hyping the story somewhat.