Carnival of Soul

For nine days, 21 Savage carried out his day-to-day inside a detention center, a timeframe that felt like two months according to his manager, Kei Henderson. The “A Lot” rapper was detained by the Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) in Atlanta, Georgia (Feb. 3) on claims that he’s a British citizen who overstayed his visa since migrating to the U.S. city in 2005 at age seven. The detainment occurred when the 26-year-old was pulled over by the Atlanta Police Department (APD), with ICE in tow. APD claims it had an arrest warrant for rapper Young Nudy, a cousin of 21 Savage who was also part of the artist’s entourage at the time of the incident.

On Feb. 12, 21 was released on bond until his immigration court case occurs. Since Savage’s incident reached the national spotlight, petitions and a larger conversation on the nation’s immigration policy have reached a fevered pitch. The situation was accelerated once Jay-Z contracted attorney Alex Spiro to represent Savage, born She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph.

While the detainment presumably shocked the masses, the most glaring issue is the fact that Abraham-Joseph was not initially granted bond — that discretion is left up to ICE or a judge. Spiro notes that ICE can also attribute past criminal offenses “into their enforcement policies and strategies,” when it concerns detainment, but given ICE’s controversial statement on Abraham-Joseph (noting his past and expunged felony drug charge), Spiro believes this situation is a “miscarriage of justice, a misuse of resources.”

“And I’ll say two further things,” Spiro continues. “One is even if you take the position that he should have to answer to ICE for any of these issues, why not bond him out, allow him access to his paperwork, to his family, to his lawyers and allow him to fight his day in court like a civilized human being? The second thing is, to talk about the resource question, even thinking about this as an economics question, rather than let this man be at liberty where he provides for so many people, so many people depend on him for their own employment, so many of his dollars go to helping taxes, so many of his dollars go to philanthropy and helping people and rather than allowing him to help society and bring joy through his music and bring happiness, instead of that, what do we do? We take those same government resources and we do an operational target to incarcerate him, to cage him.”

Spiro says he can’t draw up conclusions or “speak to” ICE’s “motivations,” noting that there could be varied reasons behind the agency’s motion. “It may be just as simple as they’re just treating him like everybody else but we’re not used to it as a society becoming so public,” Spiro says. “Once it becomes public it’s just troubling and seems disproportionate and illogical, and it may very well be that he was targeted either to set an example or for some other convoluted reason. I don’t know yet because my focus has almost entirely been on the avenues to release, but we’ll get to the bottom of what happened here one way or another.”

Now, with Abraham-Joseph awaiting the fate of his status in the U.S. while out on bond and in the midst of an expedited hearing, Spiro states the pieces of this puzzle have to be treated with precision. “When you’re dealing with people’s liberty, you can’t just look at it like an equation. You have to try at least at some level to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think to yourself if they had the power and I had grown up in their country, how would I want to be treated and what would be the decent and right way to treat me?” he says. “If we could do that and have a little empathy I think it would go a long way to solving what anybody in the world outside of America must think is a very troubling problem and a lot of people in America are starting to think is a troubling problem.”

Here, we look at a few terms and past immigration instances that outline the severity of the country’s treatment of migrants and the legislation that can alter the lives of those awaiting legal residence.

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1. How The IIRAIRA Radicalized Immigration:

The combination of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) allowed the government to separate undocumented immigrants into two sets. According to The Huffington Post, the division is distinctly based off how a migrant entered the U.S. If one came to America with a visa but overstayed its duration, then they will not have to return to their home country in order to file for official residence since they entered legally. If someone entered illegally, they would have to return to their native country in order to file for legal residence.

If an applicant raises a red flag under any “grounds of inadmissibility,” like unlawfully living in the country between 180 to 365 days, applicants can face a three-year penalty, while overstaying more than a year can pin 10 years before someone is allowed re-entry.

“Removal deportation and the laws that govern it are very complicated. Suffice it to say that we are trying to avoid that,” Spiro says concerning Abraham-Joseph’s case. “The other thing that can happen is the visa and paperwork that’s been pending can actually get accelerated and get determined fast enough so that they catch up or bypass the need for removal.”

2. Qualifications For U Nonimmigrant Status (U Visa):

It’s been stated that Abraham-Joseph has filed for U Nonimmigrant Status or a U Visa in 2017. Persons that qualify for this form of legal residency have to be a victim of a specific crime (sexual assault, trafficking, extortion, manslaughter, domestic violence, witness tampering) or encountered mental or physical trauma as a result of the crime’s aftermath. Victims can also assist law enforcement in apprehending suspects and helping to solve the case.

In 2013, Abraham-Joseph was shot six times and lost his close friend, Johnny, during the incident. The pair were the victims of an attempted robbery. Spiro notes 21 Savage’s application has remained pending for quite some time. “The backlog is years and years, this site indicates that over five years these visas can be pending before processing,” he says. Spiro believes an increase in employees to handle these types of applications can help accelerate processing times. “Maybe we should put more people to process visas and be humanitarian in the way that they deal with people and less people out handcuffing un-dangerous people who don’t need to be handcuffed.”

If Abraham-Joseph’s U Visa application gets approved by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), he will become a “lawfully permanent resident” or a Green Card holder, and have access to rights like opening a bank account and attending an “academic or vocational” school. The government caps the amount of U Visas it approves at 10,000 per year. A victim of criminal activity is solely eligible for this form of immigrant status, not their families. The length of the U Visa’s processing time can take anywhere from a year to a year and a half.

3. Detainment Conditions And Mental Health:

Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center is the reported facility where Abraham-Joseph was held. According to Rolling Stone, it’s deemed one of ICE’s worst immigration centers with multiple reports of sexual assault, abuse of solitary confinement by guards, and expired food being served to detainees. In a summary published by Project South, Irwin is also known for administering high bond rates.

Spiro says Abraham-Joseph’s living conditions were “inhumane” and his communication with those on the outside was strictly limited — to have contact with his legal team was a privilege. “He has no ability meaningfully to exercise and have proper nutrition and he’s severely limited in his ability to even get legal help and to protect himself. He can’t respond when somebody says something in public or the media. He’s given no voice,” Spiro reveals. “He’s utterly voiceless and it’s a dehumanizing experience and he’s lucky that he’s so beloved that people are going to be out there protecting him for him but it is a scary thing to not be able to protect yourself. He has young children. He can’t be with them to protect them and it’s a travesty.”

In mid-2018, Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy displayed how dire conditions are within detainment centers, especially concerning children who are separated from their guardians, and the mental health assistance that certain people will need once released. It’s also reported that immigrants dealing with mental health issues have been unjustly placed in solitary confinement. “There is a pattern of people with psycho-social disabilities being inappropriately placed in isolation, not receiving adequate mental health care, and dying by suicide,” said Clara Long, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. Recently, a 40-year-old Russian man named Mergensana Amar, who was seeking asylum, committed suicide after a year of detainment at an immigration center. The Washington Post also notes that nine people died in 2018 while under ICE’s detainment.

4. The Cost Of Detainment:

In a report by CNBC that analyzed ICE’s 2018 budget, $133.99 per day is the cost it takes to preserve an adult bed. For families that include mothers and children, $319 per day is the cost to maintain that space. The article also outlines ICE’s estimate that immigrants are kept in detention centers for 44 days on average.

“Every single day that he is in there, we are paying for him to be detained,” Spiro says on Abraham-Joseph. “We are paying money to actually put this man in a cage when he can just as easily fight this case from the outside and we can go to court and handle it that way.”

Earlier this month, Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) gathered 200,000 signatures to demand that fellow Democrats decline future increases in ICE’s budget, The Hill reports. Ocasio-Cortez, who has called for ICE’s abolishment, took aim at the agency for its treatment of not only Abraham-Joseph but also political game-changers and children.

5. Immigration Across The Globe:

Across the globe, the paths of migration from underserved countries to those with greater economic opportunities continue to shed a spotlight on various nations’ immigration policies. There was the onset of Brexit in 2016, Italy’s crackdown on an influx of those seeking asylum, and Trump’s belief that a border wall between the states and Mexico will drastically cut crime, plus his Muslim Ban proposal.

The Trump administration recently attempted to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, which benefited those migrating from El Salvador, South Sudan, Haiti, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Honduras, Syria, Nepal, and Nicaragua. It was meant to protect migrants who left countries ravaged by natural disasters or armed turmoil and are unable to return. Over 320,000 people fall under TPS.

Another sector of immigration that fell under intense scrutiny within Trump’s administration was the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). In 2017, he attempted to nix any hope of “dreamers” renewing their application, thus putting them at risk for deportation. DACA, which benefits 700,000 young adults, was established in 2012 to temporarily protect children who migrated to the U.S. before they turned 16 from removal. It also presented another form of the term “lawfully present” and would allow DACA recipients a chance to get a higher education and work permits as they went through the proper channels for legal residence.

“I think that young people that are not born here, and so are not given citizenship but come here in their early years, face the question of their place and their status from the moment they start becoming adults,” Spiro says. “As a teenager at some point no doubt where you realize you’re not an American citizen and if something goes wrong, if you don’t have a way to get citizenship, if you don’t have a way to get status, if you don’t have a way to get a visa, that you live a life in limbo and a life that’s insecure in some ways. That’s a troubling thing for people to have to grow up with.”

While Abraham-Joseph was released on bond, his fate is still in the process of being determined by an immigration judge. “There are rules and laws that govern this but at the end of the day ever since he was moving forward with his life as an adult,” Spiro says, “he’s been dealing with this immigration issue and dealing with it in good faith.”

A Tribe Called Quest were already icons when founding member Malik Taylor, the rapper known as Phife Dawg, died in March 2016 from diabetes complications at the age of 45. When the group capped their career by releasing their final album We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service that November, they completed one of the greatest comebacks in music history. Fans who had grown up listening to Tribe shape the sound of hip-hop in their ‘90s prime rapturously received their final work critically and commercially. Essayist and poet Hanif Abdurraqib, author of acclaimed collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, has captured the authentic feeling of fandom in his latest book, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest.

Go Ahead in the Rain is an efficient summary of Tribe’s history, from their origins on Queens boulevards through their occasional contentious live reunions in the ‘00s and into their finale. But the heart of Go Ahead in the Rain is the author’s own relationship with the group and their work. The book’s cover calls it a “love letter to a group, a sound and an era,” and entire chapters are written as letters to principal figures such as Q-Tip, Phife, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

Abdurraqib ambitiously blends the universal and the personal: the first chapter traces the roots of hip-hop and jazz back to rhythms preserved by enslaved Africans in the Americas, and the author crystalizes those centuries of history into a story of his father rebuking a micro-aggressive middle school jazz teacher. Tribe’s albums, infused with the jazz from their own parents’ record crates, were among the few hip-hop works approved by Abdurraqib’s parents in an era where media scaremongering around N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew made the genre taboo.

Go Ahead in the Rain further functions as a pocket history of a hip-hop golden age, illustrating Tribe’s importance through collaborators and rivals. It’s illuminating for fans of the group, but even hip-hop novices will be moved by Abdurraqib’s book. It’s a tribute to A Tribe Called Quest and a tribute to the power music has to grow with the listener. It’s a book for anyone who has secluded themselves in headphones, pressed play, and heard themselves singing back in someone else’s voice. VIBE spoke to Hanif Abdurraqib by phone from his native Columbus, OH about grieving for Phife, paying tribute to Tribe, and the deep cut that gave his book its title.

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How did your work on this book begin?
The work on the book began when Phife died. At the time I was working for MTV News, and I had to write a quick elegy to Phife. I thought about how uniquely specific A Tribe Called Quest was in shaping a part of my identity that I’ve held onto for most of my life: my comfort in the weird, or comfort in the absurd. Or comfort in the things that don’t feel quite right to everyone. I found myself wanting to celebrate that, even more by the year of 2016.

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Got to hold the real-life final copies of this book today. The cover has shiny gold(!) and I am very excited. I so loved working on this book. A project which also involved working on myself and my relationship to loss and nostalgia. It comes out in about three weeks. I would be happy if you got a copy. The link to order is in my bio. Thanks so much to all of the people who believed in this project, particularly when I insisted that I didn’t know what I was doing. Also thanks again to UT Press for letting me get away with this cover design.

Because our new normal, especially around news cycles and political violence, is understood as a low, kind of consistent hum that has interwoven into our everyday lives, it can be forgotten that 2016, at least for a lot of folks, was really draining. It was especially violent, and especially heartbreaking in numerous ways. And I think 2016 saw another reshaping of the current political protest movement, and what I saw as a shift in people’s very clear demand to turn their attention towards protecting those they love, right? Protecting their people first.

I think Tribe’s album coming out, they spoke to every corner of this. I don’t know what I was expecting in 2016 when the album dropped. But I think what I took away with this album was, speaking not only to a singular political moment, but speaking towards the whole of these moments we’ve been living in for a while.

So do you see this book as preservation of that Tribe myth?
Yeah. It all came to the forefront for me because in the weeks before the last album came out, I was in a high school doing a reading to some 15 year olds. And they had really no access point for A Tribe Called Quest.

I needed to write about what A Tribe Called Quest meant to me, as someone who was young, and who for a while could not have a lot of rap in the house, but could have A Tribe Called Quest in the house. How they catered toward an era before theirs. How they catered towards jazz, and sounds that, at least in my house, my parents could appreciate and welcome in. N.W.A. wasn’t getting in the house.

And so, I wanted to write my way to an understanding that what I lived through was real, because I think if I didn’t do that, I would take it for granted.

Take for granted your own memories of your relationship with Tribe?
Yeah. And take Tribe for granted themselves, right? When someone dies, musicians particularly, the question that comes around is “how good a job did people do to honor this musician while they were still here?” I saw myself asking that after Phife died, and wanted to start that path of reconciling that.

Because I loved Phife. Phife was immensely important to me. Not just as a rapper, but how he sat in the makeup of A Tribe Called Quest, and how he was in some ways rebellious, and hard to control, but magical all at once. All those things meant such a great deal to me, but I didn’t articulate that nearly enough when he was still alive.

And with this book I am thinking, what can I do beyond the grief to honor a group I love? In doing that I wanted to also be clear in saying, yes, this is about Tribe, but it’s not only Tribe. It’s Native Tongues, it’s Mobb Deep, it’s N.W.A., it’s Wu-Tang. It is inside an ecosystem in an entire era that truly shaped me, and deserved my returning to it in a state beyond grief.

So you returned to the sound of that entire era, not just Tribe?
Because so much of Tribe is at the beating heart of what has happened in hip hop ever since they became prominent, they’ve been pace-setters for the genre, and particularly for a lot of production techniques that exist and are still being utilized now. I found myself returning to hip-hop from ’87 to ’96 primarily, because I think I had to do that in order to make sense of the A Tribe Called Quest album trajectory. How do we get from People’s Instinctive Travels to Beats, Rhymes and Life?

You have to immerse yourself in the music happening around Tribe. I’m a Beats, Rhymes and Life apologist or whatever. I don’t think it’s as bad as people suggest it is. I also understand that it’s not their seminal work. But in a way, that album was made in response to what was happening around it in hip hop. I write about this in the book, that album failed for some as a Tribe album because it was the first one that wasn’t setting trends, but it was responding to trends.

Listening in this context, listening to bridges I wasn’t getting to hear before was important. It was important for me to listen to Mobb Deep, and see how Mobb Deep is kind of like A Tribe Called Quest in a funhouse mirror. It was critical listening that I had never thought to apply to this particular musical lineage.

In the book’s conclusion you mentioned quite a few modern acts that you see as sort of descendants of Tribe: Anderson .Paak, Joey Bada$$, Isaiah Rashad, Danny Brown. Is there any one common thing that they all share with Tribe?
I think that, even beyond what they share with Tribe sonically, all of them are invested in risk. Tribe made a template for risk taking. Risk taking was the idea that failure is an impossible thing, right? When you look at old interviews of Q-Tip, especially around the making of The Low End Theory, at no point did it occur to him that there would be failure. There’s that iconic Q-Tip quote where a reporter asks him if he was afraid of a sophomore slump. And he responds, “Sophomore slump? What the f**k is that? I’m making The Low End Theory.” It’s like, I can’t even fathom a sophomore slump because I’m making the most important thing I’ve ever made.

I think that there is something about that energy that’s on Malibu with Anderson Paak, where he was like, “Why are you talking about anything else? I’m making the most important thing I’ve ever made.” Especially for him, someone who was homeless, who is actually trying to build a legacy that will sustain him for a long time. I see that urgency in him, and in Danny Brown and Isaiah Rashad, where even their misses are coming off the back of a really big swing.

I think the overarching critical response to Beats, Rhymes and Life and The Love Movement felt like some kind of drop-off because failure is fine if you’re taking a big swing in the process. But if you’re kind of just coasting and you still kind of stumble, it’s not as appealing. It doesn’t look as sexy.

What is the difference between We Got It From Here versus their last two records, in terms of the swing, the effort that they’re putting forth?

I think We Got It From Here is more monument than album. They spent a career climbing the mountain, and We Got It From Here is them chiseling themselves into the mountain one last time.

What’s amazing about We Got It From Here is that it’s so angry. A lot of people don’t think of Tribe as an angry group, at least not explicitly angry. Even though The Low End Theory is teeming with political commentary, it’s also balanced by the very basic tongue-in-cheek nature that comes with being in Native Tongues. We Got It From Here balances anger and grief in a very uncanny manner. When you spend an entire career, an entire life playing to the very intricate subtleties of the sonic landscape Q-Tip was shaping, and the very aesthetic landscape Tribe sat in, lengthwise you just run out of fucks. When Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were murdered on back to back days of the year, when the American political system sold people yet another bad cheque. I was so heartened by the unbridled anger that exists on We Got It From Here, because I think so many other groups would have chosen a lot more gentle send-off.

They put out an album that viscerally responded to the absurdity of the times we are living in. And that’s what they chose to ride off into the sunset, very literally. The last music video “The Space Program” ends with three of them walking off into the sunset. In the grand kaleidoscope of black emotion, anger is one of many that America wants to reckon with least. So to see that with a face and with those songs was beautiful.

One of the most compelling ways the book works is the way that you continuously tie yourself to the group, and I think one of the through-lines of that relationship is that, in a lot of ways, they were underdogs in the same way you were. They’re willing to be weird and absurd. After some of the accolades and success that they’ve had, do you still see them as the weird and absurd group, or do you think that they’ve taken a more central codified place in the culture?

Oh, they’re more central in the culture. The things that made them weird are the things that now make people beloved. They were one of the handful of groups that were pushing their shoulders up against a seemingly immovable door of weirdness, and whimsy, and not always wholesome but somewhat trying idea of black liberation. And then that door got open and they were one of the first in the room. Now the room is overcrowded, but they’re still the ones who got the door open.

I don’t think of them as underdogs, because their legacy is so built on several moving parts that are still driving the culture forward. But I do think that in a certain time in my life, when I most felt like an underdog, I relied on them to chart a course for me.

How did you decide which portions to write as letters addressed to individual people?

I think all of the time about if I’m doing a good enough job of very plainly saying, “I love what this person has done for my life. I have lived a better life because of the way this person I do not know has enhanced it.” Which on its face is a kind of silly thing. But I wanted to make that sentiment stand up. The way that I found I could do that was to somewhat foolishly enter into a conversation with the central growing heart of this whole affection I have.

I did want to talk to Tribe as if they were responding to me, because for me it feels like we’ve been in conversation for our whole lives, and I wanted to represent that on the page. The only way I knew how to do that was to write those letters to them as if they would respond, or I might be getting something back, or as if I am responding to something they’ve told me. Some incredible secret that I’ve carried for a long time.

Have you sent a copy of the book to Tip, or Ali, or Jarobi?

No. Cheryl Boyce-Taylor has a copy. I might send one to Ali, and then I think I’m just going to let the chips fall where they may, you know? I know this sounds a bit ridiculous on its face, but I didn’t write this for Tribe to read it. And I didn’t write it intentionally as a strict biography that placed me as an expert on Tribe, because they’re experts on themselves.

I wrote this book particularly for people who are fans of a single artist, and have spent any time in their life trying to untangle what it means to honor someone and all their complications, and all they’ve meant for your own complications. How to best articulate the way you see yourself reflected in the songs you love. That’s who the book was written for.

What was it like to get clearance to republish some of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s work in the book?

She read an excerpt and approved it based off the excerpt, which was really kind, because I was very nervous. I think she’s an incredible poet. And it felt irresponsible to write about Phife as a writer without also writing about the fact that he came from a writing mother, who undoubtedly influenced his relationship with the sound, and with metaphor, and with punchiness, and with his clever maneuvering of language. So it felt really irresponsible for me to write about all these glowing things about Phife’s skill set without also stressing that that skill set wasn’t born out of nowhere. And so, yes, she read an excerpt and gave us permission for the poems. I was incredibly thankful for that.

I’m currently in the process of trying to track down Ventilation, Phife’s solo album, after reading your discussion of it. It’s been a while since we’ve heard more, but there were announcements that Phife had another solo album ready to be released. Do you have any expectations around it if it does ever come out?

My opinion around posthumous releases has changed as I’ve gotten older, because I’ve seen so much music come out that seemed as though the artist maybe would not have wanted it in the world. And I’ve become more immersed in the creation of my own art, and I know that so much of that creation comes down to the final moments.

Last night I sat in my living room and laid out all the poems for my next manuscript on the floor so I could see them, and adjust them, get them into place. If I were not here, if I were not living, I would have to trust someone else with that. And who else has that particular vision but me who wrote those poems, and has a feeling for where they should move, right?

And so I don’t know how done Phife’s rumored solo album is. But if it’s not done, if it’s not like mixed and mastered, I maybe don’t want it at all, because I don’t want to remember anyone I’ve loved by the half-finished art they left behind.

How did you decide on Go Ahead in the Rain as the title?

I loved the lyricism of it, and I love the finality of it as a title. I love the idea of water in that which can make a person clean. I like the imperative of, go ahead into the unknown. That song is like a deep, deep cut. I like that it was asking of a reader. I wasn’t necessarily interested in a known entity. I’m interested in what’s most lyrical and speaks to what the book is asking.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

We’re experiencing a renaissance for black storytelling. A few years after #OscarsSoWhite called Hollywood to the carpet for lack of opportunity and acknowledgment of black filmmakers and actors, there’s a marked increase in visibility of our stories and the voices that tell them. Black content had a similar wave in the ‘90s. The expansion of network TV beyond the big three networks created space for black programming, and young black filmmakers were in demand for the realism and sociopolitical statements woven into our stories. More black movies were released in 1991 than the entire decade prior. Karen Grisgby Gates, who currently reports on race and identity for NPR’s Code Switch, wrote about the black movie boom for the New York Times Magazine in 1991. “The frenzy for black product…has become so great that black film properties may be to the nineties what the cell phone was to the eighties: every studio executive has to have one.”

Aside from being able to see ourselves and our lives on screen, the beauty in the abundance of black movies was the abundance of fire soundtracks that came with them. The soundtrack was a must-cop that was as important as the film. Even if the movie was trash. Maybe even if you didn’t see the movie. In this digital streaming era, movie soundtracks don’t happen as often; playlisting has almost rendered the compilation album obsolete. Soundtracks have been almost an afterthought, with little promotion and fanfare. Interest in developing musical companions worthy of great films is slowly returning, with the Black Panther soundtrack as a prime example. But for a blissful period in music and film, the soundtrack was actually a key part of a movie’s marketing. It was essential to the experience.

In honor of the love that black films and the music for black films are getting this awards season, let’s revisit some of the rich offerings from the golden era of original black movie music.

A quick disclaimer: The Bodyguard soundtrack transcends discussions of era and genre, so it’s not included in the below.

As a preamble and prelude, we must start by recognizing the catalyst for the black movie dominance of the 1990s, a filmmaker always incredibly deliberate about the scoring and soundtracks for his work. Spike Lee has his own lane here.

School Daze (1986) was not only a realistic depiction of HBCU and BGLO (black greek letter organization) culture, but a delightful mix of musical show tunes and jams, plus negro spirituals, jazzy soul, and the song that took gogo mainstream. School Daze was the black college experience boiled down to 11 tracks.

God bless Spike and E.U for blessing us with the universal clarion call to get your ass on the floor. We all know what that gogo drum intro means.

I put Do the Right Thing’s opening credits in my top five. Nobody dances as hard as Rosie Perez. In the world.

Do the Right Thing = “Fight the Power.” There’s a whole soundtrack, yes, but don’t ask me what else is on it. “Fight the Power” is heard in the movie 15 times. That’s the soundtrack.

Great music is a signature of a classic Spike Lee Joint. He has two movie soundtracks from our greatest musical geniuses, Stevie Wonder and Prince. He has one full of contemporary jazz. One full of ‘70s soul classics. The music is always perfectly suited to the film.

Spike proved to Hollywood that movies made on small budgets could be very profitable: not only would black people would go out to see stories created for and about them, but white people would, too. Studios were intrigued and in need of original ideas. Young, edgy studio New Line Cinema gave directors Reginald and Warrington Hudlin a $2.5 million budget for the 1990 teen comedy House Party. The movie grossed $26 million. We showed up. On opening night, not only were the seats full at the theater I went to (I went to the black movie theater, of course), folks bought tickets to other movies, snuck in, and were standing against the walls. A movie about a high school house party starring two rappers and an R&B group (Full Force), had to have the right music. Early new jack swing was on deck.

This is one of my favorite movie scenes. Back in the day, you and your crew had to have your steps together, because there was always an opportunity to show off on the dance floor.

The soundtrack wasn’t huge commercially, but it was a preview of the more evolved merging of music and film on the horizon.

Public Enemy is not a group you associate with dance tracks, but “Can’t Do Nuttin’ For Ya Man” goes. I have this on my workout list now.

In 1991, New Jack City renewed the urban soundtrack game. In the ‘70s, the blaxploitation era was a similarly big moment for black cinema. Film soundtracks were extended elements of the story. The music from Shaft, Superfly, Claudine, Sparkle and more still maintain their critical and cultural importance years later. The Curtis Mayfield-led Superfly soundtrack even made more money than the movie! New Jack City brought back the importance of extending the feeling of the movie through its music. Giant Records was a brand new label and had something to prove. “The strategy was simple: to get hot! It was about making this look like the most exciting black urban compilation record possible,” A&R Gary Harris shared with OkayPlayer. “I envisioned a record where we would put our artists on…and then surround them with stars, exciting music and that would give a platform to our artists as well as give us some billing very quickly.”

New Jack was a tipping point for ‘90s culture. It was the first film about the crack era, and the announcement of a new youth movement. Screenwriter Barry Cooper coined the phrase “new jack swing” in 1987 about Teddy Riley, and since then it was used in the street and some circles, but the movie presented new jack as a culture, not just a music genre. A culture based on lifestyle: music, fashion, partying, street savvy. So, the music had to be on point.

The soundtrack was a masterful mix of established and new artists.

It also incorporated the two artists starring in the movie, Christopher Williams and Ice T. The album reached No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200, and No. 1 on the Hip Hop/ R&B chart, where it stayed for over a month.

The floodgates opened for black storytellers. At the same time, black music – specifically, new jack swing and hip hop – was growing and breaking into the mainstream; a perfect storm for soundtrack excellence.

Uptown Records was a major force behind the evolution happening on the music side. Uptown was first real lifestyle label, the home of new jack swing, and the parent of Bad Boy Entertainment. Andrè Harrell called it the new Motown, and like Berry Gordy with Motown, he wanted to expand Uptown’s entertainment reach beyond music to TV and film. Strictly Business (1991) was Uptown’s launch into multimedia, and a precursor of sorts to Boomerang, as one of the first films centered around successful young black professionals, and as the film that introduced young Halle Berry.

The soundtrack was centered around Uptown’s roster. Father MC, Heavy D & the Boyz, Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” more than six months before What’s the 411 was released, and the debut of Jodeci.

The soundtrack also featured acts outside of the Uptown system including LL Cool J, Stephanie Mills, and Nice & Smooth. My favorite track – one of the only songs released as a single – is still a favorite in an uptown party. (New Yorkers call Harlem and areas north of Manhattan “uptown.” That’s the inspiration for the label’s name.)

What I’m about to say next is controversial, but I must speak truth to power. Juice is an urban classic, but Tupac and the soundtrack are the only reasons to revisit the film (and to look at young Omar Epps and Khalil Kain). It aged terribly.
The album, however, is still one of the best hip-hop compilations ever.

The Juice soundtrack is super “up top,” super hip-hop, with classic emcees like Kane, Eric B. & Rakim, EPMD and Too Short (for some west coast representation).

It also featured one of Naughty by Nature’s greatest joints. I think we sleep on Treach, but that’s another sermon.

Really though, beloveds, you can drive a mack truck through the movie plotline.

In June 1992, Eddie Murphy gifted the world with Boomerang: one of the smartest, funniest, most well-written ensemble romantic comedies ever. Of any genre, any demo, ever. And God opened the heavens above Kenneth Edmunds’ house and told him to go forth and produce R&B soundtracks.

L.A. Reid and Babyface were already OG songwriter and production hitmakers, but this was their first movie project. The relatively new label heads were inspired by the success of New Jack City, and used the soundtrack as their benchmark. They spent time on set, watching while creating, which is why all the songs fit so perfectly with the film.

Uptempo love bops. A severely underrated Johnny Gill jam. Emo, heart-wrenching ballads. An unintended launch for Toni Braxton – both of her songs were written with Anita Baker in mind. Plus a little hip-hop – Tribe’s inclusion was Eddie Murphy’s call.

Music from motion pictures became a vehicle to introduce new artists to the marketplace before their solo debut.

We met Snoop and his laid-back flow on 1992’s “Deep Cover” before he jumped on The Chronic later that year.

Little bitty baby Usher was mackin’ on the Poetic Justice soundtrack.

Puff put new signee Biggie Smalls on Uptown’s Who’s the Man soundtrack right before breaking camp to start his own label and taking Big with him as the anchor artist.

The Above the Rim soundtrack (1994) is G-Funk greatness. Death Row slammed the album down on the table like a big joker after whoppin’ ass with The Chronic in ‘92 and Doggystyle in ’93. The compilation was for west coast hip-hop what Juice was for the east, and it had some solid R&B joints.

“Regulate” alone is enough to land this soundtrack in Top 5 of the decade. Warren G. put his foot in the track (even though it’s hard to jack up “I Keep Forgettin’”), and I think this is the best display of Nate Dogg’s gangsta-soul vocals. The single’s success was a large factor in the compilation’s ten-week run at the top of the Hip-Hop/R&B chart.

We rocked rough and stuff with our afro puffs (holds out mic).

Side note – Death Row drama got in the way of Rage having the shot and support she deserved and it makes me sad. Her verse on Doggystyle’s “G Funk Intro” is better than some entire albums.

SWV was good for a soundtrack remix, and the version of “Anything” with Wu-Tang Clan was everything. (Wu-Tang isn’t in the video edit.)

Above the Rim is also like Juice, in that Tupac and cast plus the soundtrack are the only reasons the movie still holds classic status. Because, man, that plot… (Imagine the shakinghead.gif of your choice here.)

Soundtracks were also a great opportunity for artists to experiment with classic covers. The complete Jason’s Lyric soundtrack isn’t available on streaming services (as is the case with several soundtracks and compilations from the ‘90s, due to publishing issues), but it had some highlights. Most notably, the male R&B supergroup Black Men United and the early D’Angelo composition “U Will Know,” Brian McKnight’s endearing “Crazy Love,” and the cover that I believe in my soul K-Ci Hailey was put on this earth to sing.

When Waiting to Exhale arrived in theaters in 1995, it was first a moment for black women. Then, it quickly became a moment for all women. There’d never been a female ensemble cast like this: middle-class black women navigating universally relatable issues in love and life, not struggling to find a way to survive in or get out of poverty and violence. When Forest Whitaker tapped Babyface for the soundtrack, ‘Face assembled an all-star roster of black female artists of all ages and career stages, anchored by Whitney Houston, for a collection that invoked love, loss, and sisterhood.

The movie was an event, and the soundtrack was the after set. People wanted to go home and hold onto everything they felt in the theater – even the sadness. There were several go-head-and-cry-it-out-and-then-move-on-girl cuts.

The soundtrack was a massive hit. It topped the Billboard Top 200 Albums for five weeks, and the R&B album chart for ten weeks. The album went seven singles deep (rare for a soundtrack) and spawned five Top 10 hits on the Hot 100, and two No. 1s.

There was something for everybody. Brandy for the young’uns.

CeCe and Nippy for the wholesome.

Toni for the chill aunties.

Plus, Chaka, Patti, Aretha, Chantè Moore, Faith Evans, TLC, and a few debuts. It remains one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time.

I’ve gone on multiple twitter rants about people who (have no taste and) don’t like Love Jones. But at least everyone seems to universally agree that the soundtrack is a banger. The term “neo-soul” was coined right around Love Jones’ release in 1997, but the movie represented the era perfectly, as did the music.

I’ve always loved the usage of music in this movie, from jazz to classic reggae to funk to James Brown at the steppers set (when have you seen a date like that depicted in a movie?).

Before the movie had even opened, I was pressed to see it, because this was the best song I’d ever heard in my life. Even though “The Sweetest Thing” was credited as The Refugee Camp All-Stars, it was really our first taste of Lauryn’s solo style.

Love Jones combined classic jazz compositions, contemporary jazz vocalists, and the as-yet-unnamed neo soul genre artists, and it felt cohesive.

Maxwell was a late ‘90s/early ‘00s soundtrack staple.

Rounding out the decade is 1999’s The Best Man. The movie’s biggest musical impact is probably establishing Cameo’s “Candy” as the new official electric slide song (we weren’t doing that before this movie came out, real talk).

The soundtrack was a great mix of chill R&B (including an early Beyoncè duet that I always forget is Beyoncè), and good hip-hop.

Where is Jaguar Wright, by the way?

Lauryn was reveling in her new Marly-ness, doing updates of her father-in-law’s classics.

This is the video that should go in a time capsule for early 2000s R&B. For the hood and the highrises, or the mansions with the maids (LOL, RL thought that was deep).

Again, Maxwell was present and accounted for.

There are so many more albums I could have touched on: Boyz n’ the Hood, The Five Heartbeats, House Party II, Menace II Society, Mo’ Money, Higher Learning, Low Down Dirty Shame, Friday, Life, Bad Boys, The Nutty Professor, Rush Hour, Romeo Must Die, Don’t Be a Menace, Panther, How to Be a Player, Belly, Hav Plenty, Soul Food, Love and Basketball (even though that’s 2000), and probably at least ten more that spawned one or more hits from the soundtrack. And that’s just taking original music under consideration. There were also dynamic compilations of classics like Crooklyn and Dead Presidents.

The thing is, the story of the golden era of soundtracks is the story of the golden era of black films. It’s overwhelming to remember the sheer volume of output from black directors, producers, and/or actors during this span of time, and sad to consider that decades later we had to start all over again and are just now seeing progress with representation (and with acknowledgment; the earlier movies were largely ignored by mainstream awards bodies). Yet it’s still only a fraction of what we had. In the 1991 Times article referenced earlier on the increasing demand and opportunity for black filmmakers, Warrington Hudlin realized a change in the media landscape was due, pointing out that “(i)f, within the next thirty years, America is going to be predominantly a nation of people of color, then white studio executives had better begin to understand who their consumer is going to be.” That thirty years is almost up. Last year, there were soundtracks for The Hate You Give, Creed II, A Wrinkle in Time, the Superfly remake and of course, Black Panther. Maybe by the time we reach 2021, the black movie and soundtrack game will be back in full effect.

#MusicSermon is a weekly series by Naima Cochrane that highlights the under-acknowledged and under-appreciated urban artists and sub-genres from the ’90s and earlier. The series seeks to tell unknown and/or forgotten stories that connect the dots between current music, culture and the foundations of the past.