THE STORY OF A SONG: Curtis Mayfield - "Superfly"

There is some debate as to which was the first blaxploitation movie—that is, a film made with black actors for a black audience and concerned with black urban and ghetto themes. Both Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Shaft came out in 1971, swiftly followed by Super Fly, for which Curtis Mayfield wrote and performed the soundtrack. 

Mayfield, a politically committed soul and R&B singer and composer, was a strong supporter of civil rights, black pride, and black power. His soundtrack to the film is at variance to the film itself. Super Fly is about a black cocaine dealer who is trying to quit the business. If the movie’s message is ambiguous, Mayfield’s soundtrack is anything but: a series of hard-hitting lyrics that criticize the ghetto’s glorification of drugs and directly attack some of the movie’s characters. 

The title track itself—spelled as one word, not two—is a delight, sung in Mayfield’s trademark falsetto voice. Its opening bass line and percussion break, now much sampled, lead into a lightly sprung funk line interrupted by brass and percussion chords that support and enhance the vocals. Both the song and soundtrack were huge and immediate commercial successes, the soundtrack being one of the few to easily outgross its film. It is also one of the first soul concept albums, every bit the equal of Marvin Gaye’s contemporaneous What’s Going On.