Jonah Hill is taking a smoke break when a building security guy who looks like he hasn’t taken an ounce of shit since the Nixon administration gives him an earful. “There’s no smoking within 15 feet of the front door,” the man scolds. Hill dutifully scurries a few storefronts down the Manhattan sidewalk, muttering some annoyance under his breath. Then, with the anxious excitement of a teenager, he spends a solid 10 minutes detailing the complications of being a Kanye West fan in the MAGA-hat era. “It’s starting to feel like we’re on the wrong side of history,” he concludes, voicing the concern of a generation brought up on Kanye’s blustering brand of ambition.
At 34, Hill is a comedy veteran, a two-time Oscar-nominated actor and, with this week’s coming-of-age gem Mid90s, a film director. He’s also an obsessive music nerd. This becomes clear throughout Mid90s, which stars a tight crew of foul-mouthed and gold-hearted skaters in Los Angeles during the time of Ninja Turtles and chain wallets. Within the film’s first few minutes, the 13-year-old main character sneaks into his older brother’s room and gawks in awe at a row of period-perfect rap CDs—albums by the likes of Mobb Deep and Gang Starr that were painstakingly chosen by Hill, who also wrote and music supervised Mid90s. From there, it feels like a minute doesn’t go by without a song breaking in. He takes every opportunity to spotlight his favorites, from Philip Glass to the Pixies, but the movie’s many moments that play out to ’90s rap are especially meaningful to Hill.
“Hip-hop is often butchered in film—it’s usually used to show someone driving through the hood or making a billion dollars and buying champagne—but it was the emotional backbone for me growing up,” he says in the offices of A24, the indie production company that’s backing Mid90s. “So a large ambition in making this film was to frame A Tribe Called Quest or Wu-Tang Clan in the same way that the Beatles were framed to our parents’ generation.”
He mostly listens to hip-hop in his everyday life, including the boom-bap sounds of his youth and newer artists like Drake, Earl Sweatshirt, and Fat Tony. But he is decidedly not into a lot of today’s most viral hip-hop. He even gave the adolescent stars of his film iPods filled with ’90s touchstones in hopes of turning them away from SoundCloud rap. And, according to Hill at least, it worked. “I’ve gotten them to admit that their generation’s music is trash,” he says with some pride.
And yet, as he talks about the songs streaming through his headphones as of late—from ’60s psych to ’70s singer-songwriter fare to classical—it seems that, by and large, his ear is still open.
Harry Nilsson: “Without Her”
Harry Nilsson is my favorite, he’s the OG to me. His voice is so beautiful, and I love his sense of humor, and the pain beneath it. We had his song “Without Her” in Mid90s at one point, in a scene where the kids in the film were listening to it in the car. But then we realized that the scene was way better with no music—and because it was me being corny, and obviously these kids aren’t listening to Harry Nilsson. A lot of times you pick songs you’ve always wanted to see in a film because they’re so great, and then you’re like, “OK, what’s appropriate for this story?”
Music is the fundamental groundwork for all the writing I do; in the film, every scene with a song was written to that song. Living in New York, I’ll just walk around and imagine things in my head while listening to something and thinking about what feelings it evokes. So even though there’s no music in that car scene, I was listening to “Without Her” while I was writing it, so it’s still an influence.
Omega: “Gyöngyhajú lány”
I loved using this Omega song that Kanye sampled on “New Slaves” in the film and the trailer. I always research every sample, and it’s so fun to get a playlist of every sample from every song I love. That comes from chopping up records: From age 16 to 20, I had an MPC sampler and chopped up vinyl like every other nerdy kid who was obsessed with hip-hop. I loved how painstaking that process was. To me, one of the best feelings I would ever have is when I would buy a used record and find a sample on it, and then realize a great producer had already used it. Even though I would be a little disappointed—and even though no one gave a shit about my opinion—I loved that feeling because I was like, “Wow, I have a good ear.” It gives you hope.
It’s a hard one right now, but of course I still love Kanye. He’s the artist of my generation. My friends and I have a Kanye chain—it’s been very dormant recently, but we did a top five Kanye songs, and my No. 1 was “Power.” But at this point, people ask me about him all the time, and I just say to them, “He either needs to land this or apologize, because I have Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, and my sister’s not having it, and I’m exhausted.” It gets harder and harder to have these fucking arguments with people. I’ve known him for a long time—I’ve been down the road of almost directing three videos with him. He’s a genius. But I don’t know what the fuck this whole thing’s about.
George Frideric Handel: “Sarabande in D Minor”
While making this movie over the last four years, I was listening to ’90s hip-hop—songs like Souls of Mischief’s “93 ’Til Infinity”—because that was the engine behind writing and directing it. But now, I can take a breather. I listen to a lot of classical as a palate cleanser. I’m not well-versed in it yet, but I’d like to be; I’m just starting my education. I’m listening to Handel, whose music was used as the theme for Barry Lyndon, which is one of my favorite films. I got into his music after watching that movie so many times.
