{"id":49425,"date":"2025-09-07T16:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T16:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/49425\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T16:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T16:15:07","slug":"highest-2-lowest-rap-battle-stars-denzel-washington-aap-rocky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/49425\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Highest 2 Lowest’ rap battle stars Denzel Washington, A$AP Rocky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

‘Highest 2 Lowest’ trailer: Denzel Washington back with Spike Lee<\/p>\n

New York City music mogul David King (Denzel Washington) faces personal and professional dilemmas in Spike Lee’s crime thriller “Highest 2 Lowest.”<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert! We’re discussing important plot points and the ending of \u201cHighest 2 Lowest\u201d<\/a> (streaming now on Apple TV+), so beware if you haven\u2019t seen it yet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do not get in a rap battle with Denzel Washington<\/a>, unless you want to be served a verbal whupping.<\/p>\n

When director Spike Lee<\/a> teamed for a fifth time with the A-lister on his new thriller \u201cHighest 2 Lowest,\u201d a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa\u2019s 1963 police drama \u201cHigh and Low,\u201d the filmmaker figured he\u2019d get some Oscar-caliber acting. The fact that Washington could spit bars like a hip-hop icon was more of a surprise.<\/p>\n

That and the fact that Washington actually held his own with Grammy-nominated rapper A$AP Rocky.<\/p>\n

Join our Watch Party! <\/strong>Sign up to receive USA TODAY’s movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cGame recognizes game,\u201d Lee says. \u201cYou got the old blood and then you got the young whippersnapper. So it’s playing on a generational level, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHighest 2 Lowest\u201d stars Washington as David King, a music mogul whose label Stackin\u2019 Hits Records is, as Lee puts it, \u201cnot stacking hits no more.\u201d As King moves to take financial control of his label and keep it from merging with another company, he gets a call from a stranger that his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is kidnapped and being held for a $17.5 million ransom. But by mistake, Trey\u2019s friend Kyle \u2013 the boy of King\u2019s longtime associate Paul (Jeffrey Wright) \u2013 is the one being held, and King works with the police to pay the culprits and get the kid back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mastermind behind it all? That would be up-and-coming ex-con rapper Yung Felon (Rocky), who leads King and the police on a chase through the Bronx but winds up with the money. While King becomes a local legend \u2212 \u201cDa Black Panther of Da Bronx\u201d reads one newspaper headline \u2013\u00a0he still needs to make up for that lost cash.<\/p>\n

Because he has \u201cthe best ears in the business,\u201d King later realizes that the voice on the phone matches the track on his son\u2019s playlist featuring Felon. He and Paul hear where the \u201cstreets\u201d are saying that Felon is located, they find his girlfriend and infant son, and King ultimately tracks him down to a hidden recording studio. Felon confesses that he looked up to King and has wanted to work with him for years, and King gives him a chance, spurring him on to \u201crepresent\u201d and \u201csay something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington went rogue and the impromptu rap battle he starts “was not what was written” in the script, Lee says. \u201cSo we’re getting ready to shoot, and I don’t know when it happened, but Denzel was doing research so he started busting bars from Nas’ \u2018Illmatic\u2019 album.\u201d Specifically, Washington started doing his own take on \u201cRepresent,\u201d saying, \u201cI used to sport Bally\u2019s in Cazals with black frames, now I\u2019m into new chicks, texts and Beck\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rocky then responds: \u201cI gotta feed the streets, my lady and a newborn kid, and I ain\u2019t tryin\u2019 to go back and do another bid, you dig?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God that Rocky was there, because I didn’t know Denzel was going to do that. Rocky didn’t know that, either,\u201d Lee says. \u201cBut Rocky was like, \u2018Oh, he’s gonna rap? I’m the rapper!\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Denzel started going to his battle rapper mode, Rocky was there right with him. I attribute that to Denzel’s genius,\u201d Lee adds. \u201cWhen you have actors who elevate the scene at the same time, they’re elevating the movie. And this is a classic ‘High Noon’ toe-to-toe showdown-at-the-corral heavyweight fight. The film just takes off.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ end?<\/p>\n

King tells Felon to \u201chandle his business,\u201d but the young rapper escapes only to be subdued by King on the 4 train. The finale of the movie finds them meeting again in jail, as Felon becomes a streaming sensation beginning a 25-year sentence. He still wants King to sign him so they both can cash in on Felon’s newfound fame, but King rebuffs him, saying he\u2019s started a new, smaller family label and making it clear to Felon that life’s about more than just money.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old bloods, they live the life,\u201d Lee says of the ending. \u201cThey’re talking from wisdom and knowledge while (Felon and his ilk) are young and you don’t know (anything).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Highest 2 Lowest’ trailer: Denzel Washington back with Spike Lee New York City music mogul David King (Denzel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[840,365,36522,4242,715,36526,36520,4404,19703,19708,18,117,1237,2873,19,17,36521,526,5718,1382,6004,327,337,36524,1221,5,713,1234,2384,36525,5711,36523,5572,4406,23604,716,8748,25707,2709],"class_list":{"0":"post-49425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-affiliate","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-asap","11":"tag-asap-rocky","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-crime-u0026-mystery-films","14":"tag-denzel","15":"tag-denzel-washington","16":"tag-drama","17":"tag-drama-films","18":"tag-eire","19":"tag-entertainment","20":"tag-films","21":"tag-hip-hop","22":"tag-ie","23":"tag-ireland","24":"tag-lee","25":"tag-local","26":"tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","27":"tag-movie","28":"tag-movie-reference","29":"tag-movies","30":"tag-music","31":"tag-mystery","32":"tag-neutral","33":"tag-news","34":"tag-overall","35":"tag-overall-neutral","36":"tag-rap","37":"tag-rap-music","38":"tag-reference","39":"tag-rocky","40":"tag-spike","41":"tag-spike-lee","42":"tag-thriller","43":"tag-u0026","44":"tag-urban","45":"tag-urban-u0026-hip-hop","46":"tag-washington"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}