Y’all, get ready to groove with this one. Curtis Mayfield is personally one of my favorite soul artists of all time; he’s known for bringing listeners racially conscious lyrics and music that ultimately helped bring funk and soul to the popular music stage. He started off his career as a gospel singer then became a member of The Impressions prior to starting his solo career in the 70’s.
This album specifically is often times compared to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On because of the way it masterfully blends together funk and soul while also exploring the social and economic issues of many inner cities in America such as poverty, crime, and drugs. It’s also the original soundtrack to a popular blaxploitation film of the same name. Super Fly (the movie) is about a black cocaine dealer who’s trying to leave the drug business which obviously has strong parallels to the themes Mayfield sings about on the album, although Mayfield is way more critical of these themes. The movie has some serious issues with colorism and stereotyping so I don’t know if it’s something I’d consider important to watch, but it’s pretty widely agreed that the film is best known for its soundtrack.
“Freddie’s Dead” and “Super Fly” are its most popular tracks, but the album as a whole is such an amazing listening experience imo. Enjoy!
This album is obviously orchestrated very well. I could tell from the beginning why it is a highly praised album. It's always interesting to hear albums that helped pioneer a genre or movement (in this case, soul) because they almost always sound reminiscent of all music in that genre that was influenced by it, and therefore takes some extra effort to realize that it was one of the first examples. This often leads to most of the chronological appeal of an album to be lost on me, but this wasn't the case with Superfly, I feel.
ReplyDeleteMy main complaint for this album would probably be that it it's just "a lot all the time." Superfly no doubt has a very boisterous energy, which I think works well as a movie soundtrack, but in my opinion, isn't so ideal for just listening to on its own. I will say that I liked the slower pace of the song "Think" and "Give Me Your Love".
I liked this album, and I'd be interested to see the movie as well. Great pick!
This is a pretty cool album. Like you said, this is a groovy one. Pusherman is probably my favorite song on this album for this reason. Mayfield's voice is fantastic and adds this smoothness to every song that's never out of place. The instrumentation is also exciting on this album. I get why Superfly is a popular song on this album because it really pulls out all the stops.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it takes a real special album to get me excited about soul and funk, and this album wasn't quite there. Maybe it was more unique at the time, but it was pretty much what I was expecting from a 70s funk album. A few of the songs in the middle didn't do anything for me and felt like they were maybe better suited as part of the background for a movie.
All in all, it's really well done, but not something that I'm personally too interested in coming back to.