Super Fly

My man Mike Gonzales put his goon hand down fo sho in this months Wax Poetics. His article about Curtis Mayfield and the the making of the Super Fly soundtrack bought back alot of memories for me.


First, my moms is in theatre so she kinda turned her nose up at flicks like Super Fly, The Mack, Trick Baby - you know all of the movies I would later love.

It was at the Jamaica Alden where I first saw Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier's "A Piece of the Action". Out of all of the blaxploitation flicks, the pairing of Cosby and Poitier were the funniest.

I didn't get to see Super Fly until I was in the 9th grade. My home boy John's dad had all of them joints on Betamax. "Super Fly" was the ultimate shit. I loved the ending:

Priest raises his cross containing his secret sniff stash and inhales a lil somethin...(sniff, sniff)
"Yeah, you see that envelope, in that envelope I got names, baby!
Places. Your daughter. Your faggot son.
Yeah, if you touch one hair on my pretty head that envelope goes everywhere..."

I don't know what they had in those envelopes in all of those films, they used the envelope trick in "A Piece of the Action" and a bunch of other films as well. Had to be some powerful shit in them envelopes I can only imagine what they had in there that was so incriminating (pics of the boss blowin' a dude, pics of pay offs, pics of the boss gettin' raped by a horse - and lovin it) that these big powerful "Outfit hitters" would back the fuck up...

Anyway, my two favorite tracks from the "Super Fly" soundtrack are "Little Child Runnin Wild" and 'Freddie's Dead".

"Little Child Runnin' Wild" was used some years back in an episode of "New York Undercover" where a young girl who was raped by a gang member and HIV positive was on the run. Nothing captures the desperation of the moment like those violins at the end of the song. The sadness, the despair are all encapsulated in that recording.

Oh yeah, big shout out to Patrick Sisson, his story "Night Life" is bonkers too! Love the pics can't wait to pick up the album "Pepper's Jukebox". Cop the issue and you'll see what I mean.