GQ's 'Magic City' strips fantasy down to reality (NSFW)

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?The music. The money. The magic. 
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?GQ's mini-doc Magic City is live today. It's a 20-minute NSFW look into "the Atlanta strip club that runs hip-hop." As problematic as that characterization may be, the documentary directed by Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles) offers a solid take on the culture. It includes interviews with two players who have used the nexus to catapult themselves to success — Future and DJ Esco. They tell the story of how they helped each other climb that ladder, with Esco playing Future's music in the club, long before anyone realized they were already homies behind the scenes.
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?It also captures the glamour associated with the lifestyle at clubs like Magic City.
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?"We don't have movie stars in Atlanta, so the strippers are the movie stars," Esco says. "Like they're high-class socially in Atlanta. So that's why the strip club is the dream."
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?But the seduction of the hustle is balanced with sobering criticism in the conclusion. 
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?"It's all about status right now, and it's sad but we're victims of our own culture right now," Kingpin, manager of rap group Cool Amerika, says. "Because looking the role is as important as being the role." 
??embed-1"The music doesn't help," Lil Magic, who manages the club his dad started more than two decades ago, adds. "We kinda act like we don't need the real substance in life. The music just talks about girls, it just talks about drugs and it talks about cars and it talks about all the superficial stuff. So it doesn't help that people have a hard time separating reality from entertainment. Because there is a line. It's a thick line. It's not a thin one. It's a pretty thick line between reality and entertainment. I guess I've been around long enough to realize that a lot of it is just a front."
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?Better than anticipated considering mainstream media's often convoluted gaze at this topic, the doc offers a short exploration without stooping to exploitation. Which, admittedly, is difficult as hell when women are walking around "asshole naked," as Lil Magic says.
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?GQ's accompaying longform story "Make it Reign: How an Atlanta Strip Club Runs the Music Industry," penned by editorial director Devin Friedman, is also live on the site.