Turning Up The Volume On Hip-Hop Soundtracks

April 15, 2021

Originally published February 12, 2021.

Front Seat

This is what's driving hip-hop this week….

“Soundtracks are back and right on time!!! —Young Guru

Back Seat

Respect my mind or die from lead shower.

BACK DURING MY TIME AT VEVO, we had a meeting one day with Sha Money XL. Afterward, when we finished (Sha was introducing Joyner Lucas’ music), he and I caught up as he was walking out. I’ve known Sha for a long time and it’s always good vibes when we check in. Somehow our conversation drifted to DJ Khaled and Sha broke down the Miami don’s talents with a simplicity I’d never considered before. He might have even called him the greatest A&R ever. Sha’s point was that although people think all Khaled does is put the hottest rappers at the time together on a track, his real gift isn’t the talent dump. But rather, the skill is being able to negotiate their financial credit for each song given he’s dealing with a finite number of 100 percentage points of ownership to a composition. And Sha remarked that the closer Khaled gets to turning in his albums, the harder it is to keep everything he’s done intact: the clearances, the points, the video appearances, the egos, etc. As we’re often reminded, it’s not just music, it’s the music business.

And business is hard. And business comes with politics. And sometimes businesses decide (or decide for you), something isn’t appealing to pursue.

That brings me to this week’s topic: hip-hop soundtracks.

They’re back! That is if we’re to go by my brother Young Guru. He’s onto something, though.

“The Judas and The Black Messiah” soundtrack arrived today (February 12), which follows 2018’s “Black Panther” soundtrack and last year’s “Black is King”/“Lion King” projects overseen by Beyonce. Then there’s Def Jam’s “Coming 2 America” initiative; next month, the label will release a hip-hop soundtrack and another album in tandem with Def Jam Africa called Rhythms of Zamunda, with songs more in tune to the Diaspora.

These things aren’t easy to pull off. There’s all kinds of corporate machinations at play. From production financiers to distributors and their parent companies.

Sometimes these things align perfectly, with each company involved under the same umbrella. More often than not, however, they don’t—and that leads to a lot of cooks in the kitchen and rotten meals. (How many of us have paid coin for a soundtrack that had one or two good songs and wasn’t worth the price we paid?) That latter example is more of the reason why we haven’t seen many hip-hop soundtracks as we did in the ‘90s and early 2000s.

Enter hip-hop, the greatest cultural currency known to woman and man, and the gas that powers the streaming engine.

Does this multinational movie company really wanna do business with that record label when their parent companies are warring conglomerates? And if they do, there’s the haggling negotiation over how many artists from each side can and can’t appear on a project. Then there’s the matter of who is paying for what, i.e. marketing, music videos, and so on and so forth.

So, why exactly, are we in this moment right now where it feels like the momentum is shifting things?

We have music streaming, movie streaming and Ryan Coogler (along with Archie Davis) to thank.

Coogler’s Proximity company is behind both the “Black Panther” and “Judas” soundtracks (and movies, duh), which were released on Interscope and RCA, where Davis worked and works.

The movie director and Davis are both of the culture, so inherently they have an admiration for the history of hip-hop soundtracks. Plus Coogler’s influence is only growing. Just this month, it was announced Proximity (of which Davis is one of the partners) struck a five-year TV deal with Disney. (The company was launched with the idea to create films, television, podcasts and soundtracks.)

With the advent of music streaming, a significant financial hurdle has also been lessened, with respect to manufacturing CDs or cassettes and projecting if the cost of investment will produce a healthy enough return considering the aforementioned impediments. It’s not quite, let it rip! But it’s close enough to be strategically experimental.

Now that we’re all at home due to the pandemic and in the midst of a streaming war (Netflix vs. Amazon Prime vs. Apple TV+ vs. HBO Max vs. Disney+), suits have to come up with more and different ways to event-ize their films.

Enter hip-hop, the greatest cultural currency known to woman and man, and the gas that powers the streaming engine.

Historically, a great hip-hop soundtrack included at least one of these three key ingredients:

  1. A curated tracklist that features a lot of curiosity and creativity.

  2. A breaking act who actually breaks out.

  3. A banger of a song that appears in the movie in a pivotal way.

When a film has any of these, you can get a classic album that covers up the flaws of a mediocre movie. “The Nutty Professor” (which introduced Foxy and Monica, plus Jay’s “Ain’t No”) and “Above The Rim” (hello Lady of Rage and some of ‘Pac’s most slept on numbers) are exemplary in this regard. And more people remember OutKast’s “Benz or Beamer” than the plot of “New Jersey Drive.” (Sorry, Complex, but “8 Mile” is not the greatest hip-hop movie soundtrack.)

For the “Judas” LP, Hit-Boy and his band of executive producers more than exceeded expectations.

The obvious standout is “What It Feels Like,” pairing Nipsey Hussle with Jay-Z. Over a melancholy production palette, the two trade rhymes about the politics of freedom. It’s easy to imagine the track running over the final credits.

Elements of the movie’s themes are teaming throughout the album. Whether it’s Polo G name-checking his fellow Chicagoan Fred Hampton in “Last Man Standing. Or Bump J’s verse on “Revolutionary,” where the one-time rising star from the Windy City rhymes about his life’s arc, not with regret but a resignation that it could have been worse but it wasn’t worthless. “Nigga stressed out/I’m in between celebrating and feeling left out/but I’m still counting my blessing/traumatized so we riding with Wessons,” he spits. RCA newcomer SAFE, with a vocal tenor that recalls The-Dream, is a candidate for breakout star with his breezy “Contagious” collaboration with Kiana Lede.

It took a long time to get back to this point. Movie and music companies could benefit, not to mention fans. Let’s hope it stays here.

“Coming 2 America” and Def Jam, you’re on the clock.

Trunk

Music, links, podcasts and videos I'm checking for.

  • I wrote about Erica Banks and “Buss It”/#thebussitchallenge a few weeks ago (you can read about why she was prepared for this moment, here) and now she’s gotten a huge signal boost for the track by way of a remix featuring Travis Scott. [Listen]

  • A few young guys are latching onto love themes for Valentine’s Day; for my pick the best of the bunch is Lil Mosey’s “Enough.” [Listen]

  • Banger of of the week (none Hov edition): Young Thug x Meek Mill x T Shyne “That Go!” [Listen]

  • Jim Jones x Harry Fraud connect for “Laps Around the Sun.” Don’t sleep on Capo’s consistency. [Listen]

  • Rowdy Rebel rebounds with a hot one on “Jesse Owens” feat. Nav. His flow has a lot of ASAP Ferg to it. Nav is Nav, so FF as you please. [Listen]

  • Phife Dawg has a posthumous album on the way and Busta Rhymes and Redman are riding shotgun on the first offering, “Nutshell Pt. 2.” [Listen]

  • Reason for B.F. today: Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album [Listen]

  • Cordae and Naomi Osaka cover GQ. [Read]

  • This is an easy one for me to love, a piece by Aliya S. King on hip-hop journo vets transitioning from magazine pages to the Hollywood hustle. [Read]

  • Speaking of rap scribes, NCB and Gabriel Alvarez wrote a graphic novel to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Cypress Hill’s self-titled debut album. I loved that cassette as a kid, even managed to speak about it in school on the Latino tip for some history project. Go young J-Rod. [Read]

  • Issa Rae ain’t slowing down anytime soon. (Starting to think we gave Lena Waithe the flowers Issa should have gotten. Both can have them, though!) The “Insecure” creator is bringing comedy “Rap Shit” to HBO Max and the City Girls will co-executive producer the Miami-influenced series. [Read]

  • The Ringer is taking a close look at hip-hop in 1996 as a 25-year anniversary nod to one of rap’s best years. The first piece is on ‘Pac’s Death Row debut. [Read]

  • “Hip Hop Uncovered” premieres tonight (February 12); here’s Justin Tinsley with a look at the story the docuseries shares about Haitian Jack. Crazy that a Disney-owned site is publishing work about Haitian Jack! [Read]

  • Sony/ATV rebrands as Sony Music Publishing. [Read]

  • Troy Carter joins the Soundcloud board. [Read]

  • Universal fired off on Triller last week and then turned around and re-upped with TikTok. New York’s Craig Jenkins opined about the TikTok effect: “the music being rallied behind in the largest numbers doesn’t need to be any good, only expressive.” [Read] [Read]

  • DMX’s return to Drink Champs is a must. [Listen]

  • Maino had Jim Jones on his Kitchen Talk podcast. Comedy when Maino talks about coming home from jail and his not liking Jim (because everybody he knew in Brooklyn knew him) but then running into him at Uptown over Cherry Lounge. Ha. Iykyk. What a time! [Listen]

  • Tweeted this earlier: Spotify’s “The Get Up” should have your ears. [Listen]

  • Burna Boy is still working Stand Tall with a new video for “Onyeka” [Watch]

  • Internet Money has a cool animated video for “Blast Off” with Juice WRLD x Trippie Redd. [Watch]

  • Spotlighted Pooh Shiesty’s Shiesty Season last week; he’s been drip-dropping music videos since, including “See Red.” [Watch]

  • On my Philly shhh, I gotta give props to this 3-part conversation between Oschino and Beanie Sigel. It’s a part of O’s new “Deeper Than Rap” podcast. They moved passed a lot of personal history and tragedy to get to this point. The end of part 1 at about the 26:00 min mark features talk about State Property’s legendary Hot 97 freestyle session. [Watch] Freeway was a guest this past week, too. [Watch]

  • Dave Chappelle got something to say about having Covid and dealing with haters who questioned his stance about his old series. [Watch]

  • TDE’s Punch is up to something. Eyes emoji. [Watch]

Backseat Freestyle is written and produced by Jayson Rodriguez for Smarty Art, Inc. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, feel free to email me: [email protected]. And follow me elsewhere:

Instagram: @jaysonrodriguez

YouTube: smartyartllc

Podcast: coming soon

Coffee/beer via Venmo: @jaysonrodriguez