Super Fly | Before I Kick

List Item: Watch all of the “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”
Progress: 773/1007Title: Super Fly
Director: Gordon Parks Jr.
Year: 1972
Country: USA

About a year ago, I listened to the soundtrack to Super Fly at work in loudspeaker as I was the only one in the office on the weekend. I think I was interested in what the soundtrack for a blaxploitation film could sound like as I had recently watched Shaft and this very excellent soundtrack was on my albums list. Well, it’s definitely high time that I actually saw the accompanying film, right?

I believe that this my third blaxploitation film for the 1001 list (the others being Shaft and Sweet Sweetback) and they just don’t get any better for me. Hell, I get that these are an important part of American film history and are an interesting reaction to the civil rights movement – but I won’t be heartbroken to see the back of them.

Let’s take Super Fly for instance and firstly ignore the uncalled for uses of homophobic language – if you had told me that this whole film was a visual album to accompany the soundtrack, I wouldn’t argue with you. Maybe it’s because Curtis Mayfield’s music is so omnipresent (and at one point diegetic), but this feels like a blaxploitation version of Lemonade or Dirty Computer. The film actually becomes better when viewed through that lens as it excuses a lot of the poor sound mixing and other production values.

To be honest, I think this is on the list because of the soundtrack and how iconic that was. Without Curtis Mayfield’s excellent music, we wouldn’t remember this film. That’s fine but I can just listen to the album in Spotify and get an infinitely more interesting mental film going than what turned up here. One with no homophobic language and less needless machismo.

List item: Listen to the 250 greatest albums
Progress: 165/250Title: Super Fly
Artist: Curtis Mayfield
Year: 1972
Position: #184

Well, I did say in my last post that I was eyeing Super Fly as my next album. The stars aligned a bit on this one as it kept me company in an empty office when I had to pop in a few hours on a Sunday morning to run a few statistics. This isn’t the type of music I usually listen to when running stats (at the moment the music has been a mix of Calexico, U.S. Girls and Cyndi Lauper).

However, the song ‘Super Fly’ really struck me yesterday, so I wanted to hear what the rest of the album was like. Firstly, I think that is definitely worth noting that this is definitely more Marvin Gaye and less Issac Hayes. It’s something that should have been super obvious if I had done even a cursory Google search – but sometimes it’s better to find these things out by yourself.

There are two main things that help this album to excel as a soundtrack and a soul album. The songs are able to tell good stories and the whole thing is incredibly socially conscious. Where Shaft was mostly escapism that ultimately proved damaging as it glorified violence ans drugs, Super Fly is incredibly critical of a Shaft-like lifestyle.

The titular song is an obvious highlight, but there’s more power elsewhere. ‘Pusherman’ draws parallels between drug dealers and the great evil tempters of the world (I see them as a mix of the snake in the Bible and the sirens from Homer’s Odyssey) in a soulful and ultimately creepy way. ‘Freddie’s Dead’ is about a man dying after having to find means to pay for his addiction. Surrounding these are funky instrumentals and other songs that, whilst still good, are not as harrowing.

Now that I have finished listening to all the 1001 song entries from 1972, I am still in a position where I am behind on my albums. Hopefully I will have caught up by the time I finish the songs from 1973… but no promises there.