In the second season of The Get Down, which Netflix launched April 7, series creator Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) plans to delve even more deeply into the world of hip-hop in 1970s New York.
The show takes audiences to the Bronx, where bright graffiti and underground parties provide a respite from the day-to-day violence and poverty that confront a team of talented teens.
“We wanted to make it feel like the music was inevitable. We didn’t want people to just suddenly burst out into song,” says executive music producer Elliott Wheeler. “One of our mantras was, if we took out the music, the story shouldn’t make sense anymore.”
Hip-hop historian Nelson George and Grandmaster Flash, pioneer of the DJ techniques of “backspin” and “scratch,” told Wheeler and his team what music to include. George lent his knowledge to the script, and Flash supplied Wheeler with rarely heard sets from the era as well as new sounds recorded for the show.
