‘Rap World’ is a delightful found-footage comedy

Comedy dynamo Conner O’Malley co-directs and stars in this 2009-set white-boy-rap fantasia

Rap World has what can only be called a brilliant conceit: It’s a comedic, found-footage mockumentary set in 2009 and using the DIY YouTube aesthetics of the time, about a group of idiots shooting a rap video over a single night. 

Directed by alt-comedy stalwarts Conner O'Malley & Danny Scharar and starring O’Malley, Eric Rahill, and Jack Bensinger, Rap World is just 55 minutes long. However, it was assembled for hundreds of hours of footage.

It’s also my favorite comedy of the year so far and has “future cult hit” written all over it. 

Rap World premiered in the spring as the closing night film at the LA Festival of Movies; that festival’s opening night film, I Saw the TV Glow, also co-starred O’Malley. Rap World has had a smattering of one-shot screenings in different cities — I caught it Sunday night at Philly’s PhilaMOCA — and is set to land on YouTube in a matter of weeks. That’s what Bensinger, also the film’s editor, said in a post-screening Q&A, although much of what was said in it was so tongue-in-cheek that I’m not sure that’s true. 

Rap World is about a group of men gathering at the home of one of their mothers to spend a long night recording a rap album. The plan includes plenty of procrastination, drug-taking, failed romantic pursuits, some light gunplay, and, ultimately, the recording itself. 

What I love about Rap World is how much it commits to its unique aesthetic. It looks remarkably like something that would have been shot and edited by a group of notably untalented men with dysfunctional lives who decided to make a rap album despite their clear and discernible lack of musical or filmmaking aptitude. 

Conner O’Malley leads the proceedings as the crew’s nominal leader, who has a scene with his ex-wife that must be seen to be believed. O’Malley is one of those figures with a foot in both mainstream and alt-comedy. He wrote for Seth Meyers and has been on I Think You Should Leave, but he has also made wild DIY videos for platforms such as Vine and YouTube. 

You can get the full O’Malley experience with this 17-minute compilation of his vintage Vines: 

(And speaking of having feet in two separate places, one character in the film manages to do that with two sinks at once, one of a bunch of wild, disconnected ideas that fits in here perfectly.)

The Jackass movies and CKY are an obvious influence, and they’re part of why the film has a nondescript suburban Pennsylvania setting (although the setting of Tobyhanna, in Monroe County, is more Northeastern PA than the Philly area.) The DIY aesthetic also feels a bit like Clerks, the way it looks nothing like any other movie you see today. 

The filmmaking and editing are bad, in the sense that it looks like crud, but they’re good, in the sense that the comedic timing is perfect. The film also includes the funniest smash cut to a funeral since the “aim for the Bushes” scene in The Other Guys.

Rap World is at the beginning of its hype cycle right now, and if it doesn’t emerge as a cult smash, I’ll be shocked.