Nas and Schele Williams join forces for the “Beat Street” musical on Broadway

The musical “Beat Street”, based on the legendary 1984 film that documented the birth of hip-hop culture, is preparing to take the Broadway stage — and, as Playbill reports, the production’s core creative team has just been unveiled.

Grammy Award winner Nas, whose name had been announced earlier, is creating new musical material for the show and expanding the film’s original soundtrack. He is joined by director Schele Williams (“The Wiz”, “The Notebook”), Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristoffer Diaz (“Hell’s Kitchen”), who will write the musical’s book based on the MGM studio film, and special Tony Award winner Jason Michael Webb (“Choir Boy”, “MJ: The Musical”, “Purple Rain”), as music supervisor, arranger and orchestrator.

Last month, the four artists collaborated on a 29-hour workshop to develop the stage adaptation. The production’s schedule and cast are expected to be revealed in the coming months.

“Beat Street” is set in the early ’80s and follows a group of young talents in the South Bronx — a graffiti artist, a DJ and a break-dancer — as they chase their dreams on the newborn hip-hop scene, facing the challenges of urban life. The original film, produced by Harry Belafonte and David V. Picker and directed by Stan Lathan, starred Rae Dawn Chong, Gus Davis and Jon Chardiet, while appearances by figures such as Doug E. Fresh, DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force made it a living document of the era. The film’s soundtrack, produced by Arthur Baker, was released in two volumes — the first of them became one of the first rap albums to be certified gold.

The producers of the stage version will be Richard Fearn, Arthur Baker, Michael Holman and Peter Bittenbender, together with Mass Appeal — while Baker and Holman were also producers of the original 1984 film. The production’s general managers will be ShowTown Theatricals, while the executive producers are Nathan Gehan and Jamison Scott of ShowTown Productions.