Freddie Gray: Not even remotely a "New" thing.

Life often has been said to imitate art. 43 years ago Curtis Mayfield, one of America's most underappreciated musicians, penned the soundtrack for the movie Superfly. Superfly was your basic blaxploitation movie of the 70's, featuring drugs, fancy suits, the inner city, pimpin', corruption, and a little bit of kung-fu. The movie itself is not that great a representative of the genre, but Mayfield's soundtrack was EPIC. On that soundtrack was a song titled "Freddie's Dead."

The lyrics for the song:

Hey, hey
Love, love
Yeah, yeah
Ah, ha
Freddie's dead
That's what I said
Let the rap a plan
Said he'd see him home
But his hope was a rope
And he should've known
It's hard to understand
That there's love in this man
I'm sure all would agree
That his misery was his
Woman and things
Now Freddie's dead
That's what I said
Everybody's misused him
Ripped him up and abused him
Another junkie plan
Pushing dope for the man
A terrible blow
But that's how it goes
A Freddie's on the corner now
If you want to be a junkie, wow
Remember Freddie's dead
We're all built up with progress
But sometimes I must confess
We can deal with rockets and dreams
But reality, what does it mean
Ain't nothing said
Cause Freddie's dead
Hey, hey
Love, love
Hey, hey
Yeah, yeah
Ha, ha
Love, love
Yeah, yeah
Ha, ha…

Ironically, this particular film received a lot of criticism from the civil rights leaders in the black community because it was perceived to glorify pushing drugs and the attitudes that they claimed would lead to a more violent inner city and more excuses for police to tighten the screws on the average inner city minorities. Those leaders look to be quite wise in hindsight.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

The film is a glorification and promotion of drug culture in the ghetto, and it was actually made for that purpose in my opinion.

However, Curtis Mayfield did not participate in this repressive propaganda in any way, and created a magnificent work of art that completely denounces drug culture and warns his community about "pushing' dope for the man'.

Right on, Curtis!

a reply to: antoinemarionette

The world is sorely lacking the outspoken presence of men like Mayfield, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye in today's inner cities. Those very human, very imperfect men were true icons with an important story to tell. Yeah, each of them had their run-ins and each of them stumbled and fell at times, but they got back up and kept going. That's missing right now. Too many are searching for perfection, which cannot exist in the world, or too many are willing to accept surrendering antiheroes who are quick to allow a good fight to turn towards bad.