When artist manager Sol Guy accompanied Vancouver rap group the Rascalz to Sierra Leone for a War Child/MuchMusic documentary in 2000, he had no idea what an impact it would have on his life. "That trip radically changed the way I look at the world and the course of my life and career," Guy told the Straight. "I saw both the brutal realities of war and the beauty and power of Africa."

Guy-who was living in New York at the time and working with the likes of P. Diddy-became disheartened by the iced-out, materialistic scene in the States and decided that he wanted to focus on different aspects of hip-hop culture. He teamed up with a childhood friend, environmental activist and filmmaker Joshua Sage Thome, and the two founded Direct Current Media (www.directcurrentmedia.com/). In early 2003, Guy and Thome started taking research trips around the globe to see where youth leadership intersected with music. They hiked Machu Picchu in Peru with a young medicine man, attended the World Youth Leadership Jam in India, and kicked it with global hip-hop artists at a United Nations summit in Barcelona. "Josh and I lived in different but parallel worlds," Guy said. "We felt that bringing these two worlds together would be very powerful."

The result is a series of documentaries called 4REAL that take celebrities to developing countries and introduce them to grassroots leaders and local hip-hop scenes. The first, 4REAL: Kenya-which screened last week at the annual Vancouver International Hip-Hop Film Festival-brings Somalia-born Toronto emcee K'naan to the Kibera slums of Kenya to meet Salim Mohamed, who runs both a community medical clinic and a sports program that serves more than 5,000 youths. "We wanted to show a side of Africa that doesn't usually get seen," Guy explained.

"With the 4REAL series, we want to offer a tangible connection between North American and global hip-hop," he continued. "And perhaps to offer a much-needed mirror to North America to show them where they have gone astray. The quest for material gain has caused hip-hop to ignore the form's potential to educate and empower youth. The rest of the world hasn't gone that route."