Scarface

Pain / I'm like Scarface / Sniffin' cocaine / Holdin' an M16 / See with the pen I'm extreme

Nas, "N.Y. State of Mind"

GIVEN HIP- hop's Afrocentric heritage, it's a notable irony that one of the genre's greatest icons is a Cuban drug lord portrayed by an Italian American. Ever since Al Pacino played the character of Tony Montana, in Brian De Palma's 1983 remake of Scarface, hip-hop has lionized the movie as one of its most enduring and influential caches of cultural knowledge. Though the film centers on "the rise and fall of an American gangster," in hip-hop Scarface has become a dark allegory for surviving America itself.

By all rights, the poorly reviewed and attended Scarface should have flopped alongside other failed '80s gangster epics like Michael Cimino's Year of the Dragon. However, in chronicling Montana's rise from the squalor of Miami refugee camps to the heights of cocaine-fueled decadence, Scarface powerfully resonated with black and Latino youth toiling at the crossroads between the economic devastation of the '70s and the rising crack epidemic of the '80s. According to the Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, in the movie's new 20th-anniversary DVD featurette, Making of a Hip-Hop Classic, "that shit was the fucking bible," and indeed, much of the film's slang and aphorisms quickly became an indelible part of rap music and culture. Screenwriter Oliver Stone's one-liners, like "Don't get high on your own supply," have become the "Leave the gun – take the cannoli" of the New Jack generation.

Scarface channeled hip-hop's general love affair with the gangster. Rappers have praised drug pusher Priest of Superfly and studied The Godfather's Michael Corleone. The Notorious B.I.G. took his Frank White nom de plume from Christopher Walken's crime lord in King of New York, whereas Jay-Z sprinkles his albums with dialogue from Carlito's Way.

More money, more problems

Yet Scarface endures more powerfully than its peers because its narrative taps deeply into hip-hop's obsession with the self-made man. The movie didn't invent the myth, but in Montana, rappers found a compelling depiction of how to go from rags to riches, ghetto-fabulous style. Urban youth of color saw their own frustrations and aspirations reflected in Montana's. When he complains about washing dishes at a greasy spoon, it's easy to think of other young men stuck in similar dead-end economic situations. The Reagan era's rollback of civil rights gains and promotion of a culture of greedy self-interest fueled a nihilism that Scarface feeds into and off of. In one pivotal scene, Montana looks up to see a blimp with the words "The world is yours," and that hunger still resonates with disenfranchised youth everywhere.

Moreover, like classic blaxploitation, Scarface engaged racial and class tensions. Montana's thick Cuban accent and vulgarity set him apart from the Miami power structure – be it corrupt white cops, slimy bank executives, or a restaurant of blue-blood patrons. Pacino's Montana contrasts with Pacino's Corleone: the latter is privileged, college-educated, and mannered. Montana is none of those things. He bloodies his knuckles to get out of the slums and bows to no one, white, rich, or whatever.

Truth or dare

Truth sometimes follows fiction, and a variety of hip-hop icons have played out their own Scarface narratives, however real or imagined. In Making of a Hip-Hop Classic, Houston's Scarface boasts that he took his name from the movie because he saw his own life reflected in Montana's, having escaped the slums of South Park by first dealing drugs, then turning to rapping. The whole crack-game-to-the-rap-game story has become de rigueur, as if rappers can only be real if they used to slang 'caine, and Scarface's impact undoubtedly has contributed to that allure.

Biggie and Jay-Z, both small-time hustlers in '80s Brooklyn, promoted their dealing days in verse, and Virginia's Clipse practically made a whole album, Lord Willin' (Arista, 2002), about distributing more snow than a blizzard. Still, the most striking Montana acolyte may be Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. The mogul certainly has the opulence angle down, with his drop-top Bentleys, haute couture outfits, and flashy jewelry, and his two-year relationship with Jennifer Lopez also strangely parallels Montana's conquest of Michelle Pfeiffer's aloof and beautiful Elvira Hancock. That P. Diddy also ran into controversy through alleged assaults and gun charges just shows that Combs and Montana also have shared the stunningly bad judgment that threatened to ruin their empires.

If Scarface provides a blueprint for success, it also offers a morality tale about rising fast and falling faster. Audiences love the movie's nihilistic ending, in which Montana gets Bonnie and Clyde-ed, M16 ablaze. Still, he's reached the literal end by losing everything else: his friend Manolo, his beloved sister, his own sanity. However tempting his lavish lifestyle was, the film reminds us that Montana's main sin was forgetting his own rules and ideals.

As such, the best post-Scarface rappers aren't the ones who brag about piles of coke on their desks but are MCs like Jay-Z and Scarface – ex-hustlers who constantly remind listeners that ill-gotten gains form a fragile trapdoor over the deepest of pits. Some haven't heeded the film's warnings, however – most famously Corey Miller, a.k.a. C-Murder. Brother to Master P and partner in the multimillion-dollar No Limit empire, Miller was convicted in September of second-degree murder in relation to an early 2002 club shooting. Now facing an automatic sentence of life in prison, C-Murder has lived the ultimate Scarface journey: from nothing to everything and now, potentially, to nothing again.

Face the music
Five songs influenced by Scarface

Notorious B.I.G., 'Ten Crack Commandments' This song off Biggie's Life after Death (Bad Boy, 1997) is an instruction manual that distills Tony Montana's wisdom down to 10 easy-to-remember rules. One is taken directly from the movie's script: "Number four / Know you heard this before / Never get high / On your own supply" – but the rest are no less infused with the spirit of Scarface: "Number three / Never trust nobody / Your moms will set that ass up / Properly gassed up" or "Seven / This rule is so underrated / Keep your family and business completely separated."

Scarface, 'In Cold Blood' Since Scarface derives his whole oeuvre from the film, it's hard to select any single song, but "In Cold Blood," from The Fix (Def Jam, 2002), is powerfully evocative, with cinematic qualities that would make Brian DePalma proud: "Full of formaldehyde, my clothes reeking marijuana / Cops rolling up on us / My neighborhood's like a sauna." Defiantly standing on top of his block, Scarface offers no apologies but grimly foreshadows his fate: "No more petty rock hustling / I'm in for the run / And I'm fo' sho' / Goin' be murdered for this shit that I done."

Big Punisher, 'Glamour Life' A posse cut from the late Big Pun's debut, Capital Punishment (Relativity, 1998), this five-MC collaboration (which includes Fat Joe and Cuban Link) channels the spirit of fellow Latino Montana at the top of his game – all women, guns, and funds – before the fall. Though the song's mournful strings suggest a more morose attitude, the lyrics betray no vulnerabilities as you picture Big Pun, relaxing in an oversize tub, cigar in mouth, boasting, "I used to live in the gutter / Me and my mother / Now she's 50 years old / Pushing a Hummer."

Jay-Z, 'D'Evils' Jay-Z is the modern gangster's poster child. His albums nod to everything from Carlito's Way to Bonnie and Clyde, but Scarface most powerfully resonates. For every song that celebrates the excesses of ill-gotten wealth ("Kashmere Thoughts," "Big Pimpin," etc.), Jay-Z also offers missives about the dark side of drug fame. From his debut, Reasonable Doubt (Roc-a-Fella, 1996), "D'Evils" is a brilliant three-part exploration of the price that hustling exacts as Jay-Z realizes how close he's flirting with disaster: "It gets dangerous / Money and power is changing us / And now we're lethal / Infected with D'evils."

Clipse, 'Grindin' ' This Neptunes-produced summer jam of '02 was an unlikely ode to drug dealing that managed to slip by censors at every major radio and video station. "Grindin' " is Scarface as Saturday-morning cartoon: it doesn't glam up the cocaine game so much as downplay it as recreational fun. Even the song's hijacking of nursery school rhymes accents this: "Patty cake / Patty cake / I'm the baker's man / I bake them cakes as fast I can." What's missing is all the dramatic pathos, moral undertones, and life lessons the movie doles out, suggesting how pop culture has normalized the once-renegade world of Scarface.