Rap Island

Rap Island is a 2005 American computer-animated musical comedy-drama film produced by Lionsgate Animation and Spyglass Entertainment with distribution provided by Lionsgate. It as directed by Steve Moore and written by Brian Lynch and Will Davies. It stars Lil' Romeo, Aaron Carter, Kanye West, and Whitney Houston. The film was released in theaters on October 21, 2005.

The film follows a young African-American teenager who grows up on a island named Rap Island where he must rap in order to survive their and ends up going against the best rappers in an competition of life or death.

The film received negative reviews from critics with some criticizing the plot calling it generic as well as similarities to 8 Mile but praised the animation and voice acting although the audience gave the film a more enthusiastic response. A television series, titled Rap Island Adventures, premiered on Cartoon Network in 2007 and aired until 2010. Two sequels titled Rap Island 2 and Rap Island 3 were released in 2008 and 2017 with a fourth and final scheduled to be released on October 4, 2024.

Plot
Booker Gallon is an ordinary teenaged boy whose slacks off in high school in favor of his real career, becoming a musician as he lives on a musical island called Rap Island. More coming soon!

Cast

 * Lil' Romeo as Booker Gallon, an slacker in school whose an inspiring musician.
 * Aaron Carter as Jake "Slim Beans" Austinson, a cocky and selfish teenager who is Booker's rival and also pursues in music.
 * Boris Kodjoe as Jarrell Lockley
 * Kanye West as Ricardo Links
 * Dennis Haybert as Terry Gallon
 * Whitney Houston as Chantelle Gallon
 * Katt Williams as Marquise Jacobs
 * Phil LaMarr and Kevin Michael Richardson as Keith and Luis
 * Tom Kenny

More coming soon!

Production
Steve Moore first began working on the story for what became Rap Island about 14 years prior to its release, then directed the film's development from 1994 to 1997. In August 2002, Lionsgate announced the film as Hip-Hop Kid, as a computer animated feature scheduled for a 2004 release, which Moore described as a "8 Mile-like" film that revolved around an entirely different concept. In May 2003, was pushed back to a holiday 2004 release in order to give Moore "more time to work on the story."

By June 2004, the film was retitled Rapping Kid. In 2004, the film's title was changed once again, this time as Rap Island.

Marketing
Coinciding with the film's release, Burger King released eight toys in their Kids' Meals. A video game adaptation was released on the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, and Nintendo DS.

Home Media
Rap Island was released on DVD and VHS on March 7, 2005.

Critical Reception
Rap Island has a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 2.5/10 based on 146 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "Lionsgate's Rap Island is a lackluster musical film where the songs can feel as its going on and on but is still enjoyable for those who like rap." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 36, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews." However, audiences reacted to the film more positively as opening day audiences that were polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the first film by Lionsgate Animation to have a rating lower than an "A-“.

Ty Burr of the Boston Globe said, "the script leans heavily on unfunny humor as well as a cluttered story that makes no sense with characters having bad dialogue with it being a bad idea from the start." According to The New York Times, "the protagonist is basically a watered down kid-friendly B-Rabbit from 8 Mile." Chicago Reader criticized the basic mom and dad characters.

Box office
Rap Island has grossed $106.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $200 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $306.1 million.

Sequels
A sequel, titled Rap Island 2, was produced after unexpected box office success of the first film. Peter Lepeniotis was greatly happy to give up directing issues to Karey Kirkpatrick following the negative critical reception. The film was released on April 11, 2008 to mixed reviews being called an improvement over the original and more successful.

Rap Island 3 was released on February 17, 2017, to positive reviews and was a success becoming the highest grossing film in the franchise with over $652 million.

A fourth and final installment, Rap Island Forever is scheduled to be released on October 4, 2024.

TV series
Coming soon!