Curtis Mayfield
The hero of blaxploitation cinema strutted across the urban landscape of the 70s looking clean and carrying a large can of Whupass. He (or she, in the case of sisters like Coffy or Cleopatra Jones) was usually a streetwise private eye righting the wrongs of the Man, but he would take out a brother or two if they stood in his way. The fire in his belly was eased only by his woman’s love or the inevitable big payback: pumping major heat into some diabolical ofay. Case closed.
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But while all three of these films had great sound tracks, only one of them actually increased the film’s dramatic impact and thematic complexity: Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly. Now a two-CD, 25th-anniversary edition, including alternate tracks and an interview with Mayfield, documents his essential contribution to the enduring myth of the player, that elusive mix of superhero and pimp, devil and savior. Unlike Isaac Hayes’s music for Shaft or Marvin Gaye’s music for Trouble Man, Mayfield’s Superfly reaches past the urban stereotype, exploring the human frailty that gives all myths their power.
Yet only Curtis Mayfield’s sound track to Superfly presents a hero in full-blown psychic confusion. It spawned two hit singles, “Superfly” and “Freddie’s Dead (Theme from ‘Superfly’).” Both songs went gold, and Mayfield won a special award for selling more than 840,000 eight-track copies of the album. Mayfield’s knack for the soul hook made hits of the album and the film, but his songs also struck a nerve with audiences, an impressive achievement given his source material.
On “Pusherman” Mayfield pulls out all the stops to dissect the myth of the player. He begins with a boasting rap: “I’m your Mama / I’m your Daddy / I’m that nigga / In the alley / I’m your doctor when in need / Want some coke? / Have some weed.” Priest, as the pusherman, is both salvation and damnation for those he services, and as a result he shares an odd relationship with his customers. “Feed me money for style / And I’ll let you trip for a while.” This is no typical antidrug anthem, especially when the pusherman cries out, “Been told I can’t be nothin’ else / Just a hustler in spite of myself / I know I can break it / This life just don’t make it.” Once again Mayfield creates sympathy where the film offers only flash.
