“It was emotional for all of us to see the champ holding that torch and walking up there,” Snoop Dogg said of the honor, alluding to late boxer Muhammad Ali, who won an Olympic gold medal in 1960 and drew tears from the world when he lit the Olympic flame at the 1996 Atlanta Games. “This is my own version of it. I don’t want to get too emotional, but I know that this is special. This says a lot about America as far as where we’re at in this world,” later adding, “I would have never dreamed of nothing like this.”

It was not shocking that Snoop Dogg was in an unusually reflective mood during his conversation with NBC sports commentator Mike Tirico. The 52-year-old’s journey is a story of hip-hop, redemption, Black joy and the coronation of pop culture’s ultimate unifier.

In true Snoop Dogg fashion, NBC hired him as a special correspondent to appear on Primetime in Paris for the Games following his hilarious Olympic commentary with comedian Kevin Hart in 2021 during the delayed 2020 Olympics. Clips of the pair reacting to a replay of an equestrian competition instantly became a viral classic. In short, it was Snoop being Snoop.

Still, it cannot be overstated just how fantastical it is to witness the artist formerly known as Mr. “1-8-7 on a undercover cop” who single-handedly drew the ire of politicians, community activists, Black faith leaders, law enforcement organizations, and women’s groups in 1993 become Mister Rogers in blue Chucks.

Back in 1993, a young Snoop Doggy Dogg was basking in the record-breaking glow of his multiplatinum album Doggystyle, which sold more than 800,000 copies in its first week, the most for a debut album at the time. Snoop Dogg was also public enemy number one in 1996, charged with first-degree murder along with his bodyguard in the shooting death of Philip Woldermariam. As he awaited his judgment, the hottest rapper in the world was facing public backlash from all sides, including Grammy-winning music legend Dionne Warwick.

Warwick invited Snoop Dogg, Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight and other rappers to her home to discuss what she viewed as the West Coast MC’s misogynistic content. Warwick dared Snoop Dogg and crew to call her a “b—-.” Snoop Dogg was shaken. “We were the most gangsta as you could be, but that day at Dionne Warwick’s house, I believe we got out-gangstered that day,” he recalled in the 2021 CNN film Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.

Even after Snoop Dogg was acquitted of the murder charges in 1996, his story could have just as well tragically ended before the start of the new millennium. Following his very acrimonious fallout with Knight, he told Master P that he was planning on dropping a new album titled F— Death Row. The No Limit Records founder gave Snoop Dogg a sobering, lifesaving talk that changed the course of his career and he went on to sell more than 37 million albums worldwide.

“You ain’t gon’ live to see that album out,” Master P told him before offering the embattled rhymer a recording deal. Snoop Dogg moving his family to New Orleans and becoming a No Limit Soldier was just one in a series of intriguing and sometimes stunning side missions that have taken him on his road to the Olympics. In 2005, he established the Snoop Youth Football League to keep kids between the ages of 5 to 13 off the streets of Los Angeles, producing several college and NFL stars, most recently Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud.

Snoop Dogg appeared on business executive and TV personality Stewart’s cooking show in 2008, kick-starting the oddest of odd couple business partnerships. They co-hosted Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party for two seasons on VH1 starting in 2016, were featured in a 2021 national campaign for BIC’s EZ Reach lighter and a 2023 Skechers Super Bowl commercial. He recorded a reggae album, Reincarnated, using the reggae persona Snoop Lion, leading many fans and critics to ask is this dude for real. He most certainly was.

And so we arrive at Snoop Dogg, Olympic darling and living proof of hip-hop’s limitless possibilities. This unlikely happening is especially significant given that 56 years ago, African American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who won gold and bronze medals in the 200 meter race, respectively, were virtually banished from track and field after raising their fists in a silent protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. It was a long time coming, considering the racist treatment such Olympic heroes as sprinter Jesse Owens, tennis player Wilma Rudolph, and Ali faced back home.

Today, Snoop Dogg has company. Public Enemy’s legendary hype man and reality show star Flavor Flav has become the official face of the U.S. women’s water polo team, which will compete for its fourth consecutive gold medal. Rapper Cardi B appeared in an Olympic promo video in July with world champion sprinter Sha’ Carri Richardson and became emotional over the track star’s comeback. Richardson was suspended from Team USA in 2021 after she tested positive for THC, a banned substance.

“I’m really, really proud of you,” Cardi B told Richardson. “Because you came back stronger than ever with your talent. You have evolved.”

Evolved. A powerful word that Snoop Dogg can more than attest to.

Film analysts and critics rightly credited the fourth installment of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s buddy cop flick with delivering a much needed jolt to a slumping Tinseltown. The Hollywood Reporter gave a more backhanded compliment to the film’s successful debut, stamping the achievement as a “box office upset.” Variety strangely said a scene in which Smith’s character Mike Lowrey gets slapped in the face may just “save his career,” as if longtime fans (see: Black folks) ever stopped supporting the Fresh Prince over that incident with comedian Chris Rock.

Indeed, the success of the series shows that there’s more room in the movie biz for offerings that connect fans with the classics that defined the golden age of Black filmmaking in the 1990s. Among the demographic groups who viewed Bad Boys: Ride or Die’s weekend debut, Black folks led the way as 44% of moviegoers, followed by 26% Latino and Hispanic, 18% white, 8% Asian and 4% other.

“White [film executives] have constantly been trying to figure out Black nostalgia,” said writer/director Cheo Hodari Coker, whose screenwriting credits include Notorious and Creed II. The former showrunner of Marvel’s Netflix series Luke Cage is not at all shocked at the durability of the splashy cop franchise, which first hit theaters in 1995. “It’s not just about getting older Black stars on screen. The movie has to work.”

And there’s a plethora of Black-led film properties from the 1990s that Hollywood could mine beyond Bad Boys. Set It Off, the groundbreaking, 1996 all-women bank heist that featured Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise and a breakthrough performance from rapper Queen Latifah, is ripe for a return.

A complete reimagining of Set It Off could bring together KiKi Layne as Pinkett Smith’s Stony, Zendaya as Fox’s Frankie, Ayo Edebiri as Elise’s T.T., and Courtney Taylor as Queen Latifah’s Cleo, with Gina Prince-Bythewood directing. Or just imagine Stony living off the grid somewhere in Mexico only to have another set of bank robbers seek out her help, or the FBI finally tracks her down, leading to a series of harrowing events.

Director Spike Lee’s raw 1995 New York crime drama Clockers, arguably the Oscar-winner’s most underrated movie of his career, could be translated to the small screen much like his 1986 romantic comedy She’s Gotta Have It, which ran for two seasons on Netflix. And a sequel to the sexy 1997 romantic cult classic Love Jones could catch up with Darius Lovehall (Larenz Tate) and Nina Mosley (Nia Long) as they attempt to reconnect after years apart.

Coker recalled having conversations with director John Singleton about how his game-changing 1991 film Boyz n the Hood, a powerful depiction of life growing up in South Central Los Angeles, could even be expanded.

“The same way that Quentin Tarantino has an interlinked universe with his movies, John has his own cinematic universe,” Coker said. “He could have very easily had Boyz n the Hood’s Tre and Brandi raise a kid who is a film student at USC. And amongst the people that he runs into is this old drunk from the neighborhood who at one point was rumored to be the biggest drug dealer in the country named Franklin Saint [of Snowfall]. Their son decides he wants to make a movie about Franklin’s life. Or Brandi and Tre could go to the mechanic to get their car repaired and meet Jody from Baby Boy. There are all these different ways to spin off.”

Jermaine Hopkins, who played the affable Steel in director Ernest Dickerson’s 1992 coming-of-age drama Juice, understands the lure of 1990s Black cinematic explosion that introduced such revolutionary directors as Singleton, Julie Dash, the Hughes brothers and F. Gary Gray.

“At that time, there were only a few Black films like New Jack City, Juice, Boyz n the Hood, Bad Boys and the like that hit the mark,” said Hopkins, who stars in the horror flick Sebastian, now streaming on the CW network. “The characters reflected members of [our] communities and that’s why they were so believable. We also didn’t have social media at that time, so if you lived on the East Coast, you looked at movies like Boyz to enlighten you about what was going on out West, which is why these films continue to be impactful for years to come.”

Hollywood loves a trend, and the most evergreen of them all is nostalgia. From the 2022 billion-dollar blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick and the 2004 teen film turned Broadway show turned big-screen musical Mean Girls to the unsinkable Bad Boys and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the follow-up to director Tim Burton’s 1988 hit, the past can be profitable.

“These are nostalgic faces from a time in our youth,” Coker said of the appeal to throwback films. “So it gives a chance for a lot of these actors an opportunity for a rebirth in the hands of the right filmmakers.”

Coker speaks from experience. When he was initially tapped by Sylvester Stallone in 2016 to co-write the Rocky spinoff Creed II in 2016, the second film in the boxing trilogy focused on fighter Adonis Johnson, son of late heavyweight champion Apollo Creed and rising protégé of legendary boxer Rocky Balboa — he had another character in mind to train Michael B. Jordan’s title character.

“In my initial draft of Creed II, when Creed rebuilds himself, I wrote a character that was based on trainer Anne Wolfe that was going to be Clubber Lang’s daughter,” he noted of the brazen, scene-stealing fighter played by Mr. T in the 1982 hit Rocky II. “And she was going to be the one to retrain Creed to rebuild himself after losing to Drago, because Clubber is the only person to have beaten Rocky in his prime.”

As Hollywood continues to mine our faves, studio heads would do well not to ignore the commercial and artistic flex of Bad Boys: Ride or Die. With the almost comical upheaval surrounding Marvel’s Blade reboot and star Mahershala Ali, how fitting would it be to watch Wesley Snipes reprise his iconic role as an aging, vampire-hunter? Or maybe we can see an update of Juice channeling the rebellious spirit of breakout star Tupac Shakur. “Yes, I can see that happening because the younger generation has an admiration for it,” Hopkins said. “It amazes me, to this day, when young people approach or contact me via social media, highly enthused about the movie Juice and its storyline … and they weren’t even born when it was released.”

“I’m a fan of both Drake and Kendrick. I wanted to tread lightly because I didn’t know how controversial ‘Not Like Us’ was going to get in terms of the lyrics,” Stewart told Andscape. “But the song kind of built up on its own because now that Gavin and other players [around the league] have requested it, I have free license to play it.”

Yet hardly anyone imagined “Not Like Us,” a show-no-mercy diss track, being tapped as the next omnipresent sports anthem, potentially joining such beloved jock jams as Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock’s “It Takes Two” and Usher’s “Yeah!”

In just a month, Lamar’s song, which was produced by DJ Mustard, has already become a go-to crowd-pleaser for Stewart. Dodgers resident DJ Fuze has used the track to get fans fired up during pregame warmups. Even acclaimed Dodgers organist Dieter Ruehle added the chart-topping song to his traditional playlist.

Lamar has long been embraced by the Dodgers faithful. Now the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist, who is as well known in LA’s culture as Pink’s Hot Dogs, lowriders, and Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, scored a mainstream hit that has gone beyond the late Dodgers sportscaster Vin Scully’s sacred baseball cathedral.

TNT used “Not Like Us” during its NBA playoff broadcasts. The song has been played in arenas across the NBA, from TD Garden in Boston to the Target Center in Minnesota (shout-out to Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards). The Las Vegas Aces, the WNBA defending champs, have added the anthem to their playlist, as have the Chicago Sky and the Seattle Storm.

The Michigan Wolverines, the 2023 College Football Playoffs champions, seemingly took sides when they used “Not Like Us” as the soundtrack to their 2023 season. And overseas, Lamar’s song was played during the Feyenoord Rotterdam soccer match in the Netherlands.

“‘Not Like Us’ works at every level,” Stewart said. “Sports are very competitive. People like to talk crap to the opposing side. Everybody is going to take hold of that ‘they not like us, they not like us‘ chorus. It’s a very direct song. It’s basically declaring to the other team, ‘You ain’t on my level.’ “

And it’s not just the pros. On social media, followers of marching bands at historically Black colleges and universities have been abuzz over potential arrangements for “Not Like Us” in the upcoming football season. Fans have even posted potential drum major choreography and marching band sheet music.

For Jana Lynn Walker, Florida A&M graduate and former piccolo player in the universities’ famed Marching “100” band, “Not Like Us” has all the makings of an HBCU game-day staple. Walker co-hosts the X Spaces series After Hours, which breaks down The Joe Budden Podcast and envisions Lamar’s song becoming a homecoming favorite.

“From the beginning fanfare that would be emblazoned by the brass and woodwind sections, supported by the backbone beat by the percussion to the sousaphones driving that bass line, the song has the ability to turn a crowd into a community,” Walker explained. “HBCU bands uniquely keep the spirit of the Black culture experience alive through music, and with Kendrick’s ‘Not Like Us’ showing its cultural relevance as well as being a smash hit, playing it is not only a no-brainer, but a welcomed gift to the repertoire.”

Sports anthems date back to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the seminal baseball sing-along first penned in 1908. Fast-forward to 1977, when Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust heard fans at Comiskey Park singing the chorus of the 1969 hit “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” after a four-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins. After that, she began playing the song when an opposing pitcher was removed from the game and soon, “Na, na, na, na, hey hey hey, goodbye!” became a familiar chant at sports events. The modern-day sports anthem was born.

Today, it’s unimaginable not to hear Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” roar throughout NFL stadiums, whipping fans into a frenzy amid kickoff, or witnessing NBA revelers wave their arms from side to side as Naughty by Nature’s celebratory “Hip Hop Hooray” fills up arenas. There’s a communal element to great sports anthems, as the best often transcend generations. Frankie Beverly and Maze’s 1981 classic “Before I Let Go” is just as popular as Juvenile’s 1998 jam “Back That Azz Up” on the HBCU marching band playlist.

Then there are the evergreen songs, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” and the White Stripes’ moderate hit turned global soccer stadium battle cry “Seven Nation Army,” which have become so synonymous with sports that you forget they had a previous life. This is why “Not Like Us” is so different from what Stewart described as the “low-hanging fruit” of jock rock spectacles.

“I try to find songs that are different from the norm,” said the veteran Dodgers DJ, whose playlist includes everything from 1960s guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” and Cameo’s 1976 funk jam “Rigor Mortis” to tejano singer Selena’s classic “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and rapper Skee-Lo’s self-effacing gem “I Wish.” “I like to pull the older crowd in first, but I don’t want to make it so easy for them. I want the fans to pay attention even when a team is getting cooked,” Stewart said.

It remains to be seen if “Not Like Us” will inspire the sports anthem delirium of, say, Tag Team’s 1993 “Whoomp! (There It Is),” a surprise crossover for the group, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. With more than 4 million copies sold and several high-profile television commercial placements, Cecil “DC the Brain Supreme” Glenn and Steve “Rolln” Gibson have lasted well beyond the duo’s one-hit wonder status.

“Our bread and butter is performing at halftime shows, NBA arenas, NFL stadiums, first pitches at the MLB, and now we are working on NHL third-period performances and the upcoming World Cup,” Glenn said. “Because ‘Whoomp! (There It Is)’ is worldwide universal.”

As for “Not Like Us,” Tag Team is rooting for Lamar to join them in the pantheon of sports anthem royalty. “It’s right in your face: it’s catchy,” Gibson said. “Whatever key ‘Not Like Us’ is in, it’s exciting. When you hear that sound it triggers something like the House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around.’ There’s something magical between Kendrick and that beat.”

This was before Belafonte became one of the first Black actors to achieve headlining status in Hollywood; before he joined the exclusive EGOT club (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony winner), before he befriended Martin Luther King Jr. and became one of the civil rights movement’s most consequential supporters and activists, before he used his celebrity status to help push for the end of apartheid in South Africa. Back in 1949, Belafonte was just a 22-year-old struggling actor trying to keep it together.

He was a regular at the Royal Roost and had become friends with many of the musicians who frequently played there, including influential jazz tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

“For a 25-cent bottle of beer, you could hang out at the bar and watch until the wee hours of the morning a parade of the greatest forces of modern jazz music,” Belafonte recalled in a 2011 interview with radio host Kojo Nnamdi. “And night after night, looking at these artists, I just fell madly in love with everything about them. And one day I had expressed my great difficulty in finding work as a Black actor. Not much was around.”

It was then suggested to Belafonte that he should try his hand at being a vocalist. Many of the jazz artists there had seen him perform in a stage adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men, a role that required him to sing. Young believed that Belafonte would be the perfect set-up man to fill in during intermission. He reached out to Royal Roost promoter and booking agent Monte Kay, who was intrigued by the premise.

“I thought it was a lark and kind of an interesting play idea,” mused Belafonte, “but then it began to sink in.” After Belafonte admitted that he had no musical repertoire and couldn’t play an instrument, Kay deadpanned, “We have to really start from ground zero.”

Young’s pianist, Al Haig, was recruited to help put together a set list of standards to help Belafonte get off the ground. A few months later, the nervous Harlem kid was ready for his Royal Roost debut. But what was originally supposed to be a two-man act featuring Belafonte and Haig on the keys turned into a history-making showing.

Before Belafonte could even open his mouth he was joined onstage by bassist Tommy Potter, drummer Max Roach and saxophonist Charlie Parker. Unbeknownst to the young newcomer, the all-star quartet wanted to make sure his first gig was a success.

“That was my backup band,” Belafonte remembered of the surreal experience. “A little bit later Miles Davis stepped in somewhat reluctantly, but he didn’t want to miss anything … he didn’t miss much anyway. But this is how I was launched into the music business.”

Belafonte saw music not only as a business but also as a vehicle for change. After crossing over into the lucrative supper club circuit, Belafonte was booked for a two-week engagement at Martha Raye’s Five O’Clock Club in Miami in the fall of 1950. Yet he was angered that he was being forced to sing in front of a white audience in a South defined by Jim Crow.

Belafonte quit after only seven days, returned to New York and immersed himself in the growing folk scene. Scrapping the pop ballads, he put together a stage show at the Village Vanguard that leaned heavily on the songs of his Jamaican roots and was soon on his way to superstardom. He signed a deal with Victor RCA and released his signature hit “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and follow-up “Jamaica Farewell.”

The release of Belafonte’s album Calypso in 1956 sparked frenzied interest in West Indian music and became the first album by a solo artist to sell 1 million copies (a few months before Elvis Presley would achieve the same feat). Yet the album almost didn’t happen.

“There was a huge resistance on the part of the A&R reps, who were driven by the same demons of commercial acceptability that continue to plague us today,” Belafonte said in a 1997 interview with SFGate. “They didn’t think music from the Black Caribbean would play to mainstream America. I came to the table with the songs I wanted to sing, but the company was adamant about what I should and should not do. I took my appeal to George Merritt, the head of the company, and he agreed with me, so the album was made.”

Suddenly Belafonte had a new title: “King of Calypso.” His concerts were sellouts around the world. Among other “transcendent” crossover Black performers such as Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, Belafonte was the highest paid in the industry.

Not everyone was happy with his success, though. In Trinidad, the birthplace of calypso, Belafonte was dismissed as an inauthentic interloper. Yet he always gave credit to the originators of the island music he so loved and balked at the notion that he was a pretender. “Purism is the best cover-up for mediocrity,” he said in a 1959 New York Times interview. “If there is no change, we might just as well go back to the first ‘ugh,’ which must have been the first song.”

Soon Belafonte was everywhere. He earned a 1954 Tony Award for his role in the Broadway show John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. He starred opposite screen siren Dorothy Dandridge in the film musical Carmen Jones, based on the Bizet opera Carmen. And with the release of the 1959 science fiction film The World, the Flesh and the Devil, he joined dear friend and Hollywood change agent Sidney Poitier as one of the few Black actors to headline a major studio movie. But music always kept calling Belafonte back.

He released another calypso album, Jump Up Calypso in 1961, which became his fourth million-seller. Belafonte was credited with introducing American audiences to South African singer Miriam Makeba and championed her future husband, jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, during his early visit to the U.S. A largely unknown Bob Dylan played harmonica on Belafonte’s 1962 release The Midnight Special.

Yet Belafonte wanted more, which at times came at the expense of his high-flying music career. Belafonte was on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. He and Poitier bankrolled various civil rights organizations and he got in a life-threatening car chase with the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 as they delivered a bag filled with $70,000 in cash to the Freedom Summer volunteers in Greenwood, Mississippi.

And while there were other recording triumphs such as the 1964 top 40 Billboard album Belafonte at The Greek Theatre and the top 5 adult contemporary hit “A Strange Song” in 1967, the music business was shifting. The Beatles, Motown, James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Stax Records and Jimi Hendrix were dominating the culture and Belafonte sounded out of place. Yet he still found a way to make powerful musical statements.

When Belafonte appeared on British singer/actress Petula Clark’s 1968 primetime television special (a show that prompted racist calls for censorship after Clark, a white woman, touched the arm of Belafonte, a Black man), he premiered up-and-coming folk artist Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” And he joined the host of Petula on a duet of “On the Path of Glory,” an anti-war song written during the height of the Vietnam War protest movement.

By the 1970s, Belafonte was still a concert draw across the globe and his ability to see what was next on the horizon seemed to be innate. His 1977 Columbia Records release Turn the World Around was one of the first recordings to amplify world music, well before the genre’s commercial mainstream explosion. The following year, Belafonte was a guest on an episode of The Muppet Show on which he performed the spiritual “Turn the World Around.” It was Muppets creator Jim Henson’s favorite show, so much so that following Henson’s death in 1990 Belafonte was asked to sing the song at his memorial service. In 1984, he executive produced and helped score Beat Street, a musical drama that was one of the earliest mainstream movies to spotlight the rise of hip-hop culture.

The film is most notable for featuring breakdancing crews the Bronx Rockers and the Breakers, future rap legends Doug E. Fresh and Kool Moe Dee, pioneering female trio Us Girls, and the then reigning king of hip-hop, Grandmaster Melle Mel, who warmly recalled his conversations with Belafonte.

“They didn’t need us to be in the movie,” said Grandmaster Melle Mel, who wrote and performed the track “Beat Street Breakdown” for the film, during a lecture in February at California State University, Northridge. “They just wanted us to write the song. Harry is an eloquent guy, so I’m transfixed, just listening to him. I was inspired by his conversation.”

There were more musical landmarks. In 1985, Belafonte was one of the organizers of the famine relief charity single “We Are the World,” which featured an all-star lineup led by the anthem’s songwriters, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and producer Quincy Jones. The record raised $75 million in the fight against poverty in Africa.

And when Belafonte’s music appeared in the 1988 Tim Burton comedy Beetlejuice, a new generation of fans was introduced to him. A decade later, in his 1997 PBS special An Evening With Harry Belafonte and Friends, his distinct voice still registered urgency. He tapped into his classic material from the 1950s and early 1960s, such as an audience-rousing version of “Matilda,” a gospel-fueled flip of “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” and the sobering “Dangerous Times.”

The special’s official soundtrack was Belafonte’s first album in nine years. And even as he stopped recording, music heads were picking up on his catalog. When Lil Wayne dropped his uproarious 2010 single “6 Foot 7 Foot,” featuring Cory Gunz, which sampled Belafonte’s “The Banana Boat Song,” blog era hip-hop fans were turned on to the man’s magic.

Today Belafonte’s music remains timeless. Not bad for a guy who hadn’t planned to be a singer. 

A cursory run-through online will lead you to myriad Internet posts and videos of surprised listeners. “After 34 years I’m just finding out that the man that sings ‘What You Won’t Do For Love’ is white,” comedian and actor Kevin Fredericks famously mused in 2018 on his popular social media series KevOnStage, perfectly summing up Black America’s astonishment while watching the barebones, pre-MTV music video of a long-haired Caldwell performing his original composition.

It’s the sort of reaction Caldwell encountered earlier during his first national tour as a solo artist, opening for Natalie Cole as his debut single began rising up the soul and pop charts. As he did throughout his life, the performer looked back at the baffled response he received with a grounded sense of humor.

“It’s the very first night in Cleveland, at an amphitheater,” Caldwell recalled in a 2015 interview with the Red Bull Music Academy. “We’re talking about 7,000 brothers and sisters, and I was the only cracker there. And everyone is coming to hear ‘soul brother’ Bobby Caldwell. I walked out on stage and you could hear a pin drop, just a total hush came over the crowd. It was like, ‘What the f— is this!?’ I stayed and delivered, after about 10 minutes, I had them in my pocket. That was the night I became a man, I’ll tell ya.”

Of course, shock value is not enough to turn an artist into a beloved figure. Caldwell had the goods. And like fellow soulful white artists — “Sara Smile”-era Hall & Oates, the ’hood-stamped Teena Marie, British import Lisa Stansfield, 1990s R&B heartthrob Jon B and former teen star turned indie darling JoJo — Caldwell was essentially too “Black” to be fully embraced by a white pop crowd.

Caldwell was destined for the stage. His parents hosted a TV music variety program entitled Suppertime, and at 17 Caldwell was already a professional performer. He later played guitar in rock & roll pioneer Little Richard’s band. The mid-1970s, however, was a lean period for the artist, who scuffled in bar bands in Los Angeles and was rejected by a string of record labels.

By 1977, Caldwell was 27 and ready to throw in the towel and go to work for his mother Carolyn Caldwell’s real estate business in his hometown of Miami. (Her clientele included, most notably, reggae singer Bob Marley, who befriended Caldwell.) But his mother suggested he show some of his material to burgeoning local R&B powerhouse TK Records, home of George McCrae, KC & The Sunshine Band, and Betty Wright, among others, his luck changed.

With disco on the decline, TK Records’ head Harry Stone was looking for a change and Caldwell was it. Caldwell signed a recording deal and quickly went to work on his eponymous 1978 debut album.

Yet Stone believed the finished statement was missing a lead single. Caldwell quickly composed iconic opening line of “What You Won’t Do for Love”: “I guess you wonder where I’ve been.” With its sensual Fender Rhodes keyboard and horn phrasings, the song would become his calling card, landing him both at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 6 on the Hot Selling Soul chart.

The gliding “What You Won’t Do for Love” has since been covered by everyone from Cole and Peabo Bryson, Phyllis Hyman and Roy Ayers to Goldie, Boyz II Men and Jessie Ware, and prominently sampled on the posthumous 1998 Tupac Shakur hit “Do For Love.

For the suits at TK Records, Caldwell’s sound was perfect for the African American program directors who broke many of the label’s national hits. But there was one problem: Caldwell did not look the part of an R&B headliner. Stone and others were concerned that their Black fan base would laugh their white act out the room.

Yet, contrary to urban folklore, it wasn’t TK Records’ idea to feature a shadowy image of Caldwell sitting on a park bench for the cover of his LP, a marketing ploy labels often used during the 1950s and 1960s to hide the identity of Black artists from white record buyers. “It was me who came up with the idea of a silhouette, which I actually drew, based on a photo that had been taken,” Caldwell said. “I had a piece of acetate. There was a photo of me on a bench, I traced the photograph and filled it all in to make it silhouette. Everyone just loved it – problem solved and we were able to make the release in time.”

“What You Won’t do For Love” was fully embraced by Black radio’s “slow jam” format. By his second album, the criminally underrated Cat in the Hat (1980), the identity of the dapper, white guy in a hat was out of the bag. The uplifting “Open Your Eyes” became another go-to cut and would later be sampled by hip-hop visionary J Dilla for Common’s Grammy-nominated 2000 hit “The Light.” (Yes, those are Caldwell’s buttery rich vocals on the hook.)

Soon others were digging in the crates to uncover more Caldwell gems. Producer Clark Kent mined the dreamy “My Flame” for The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Sky’s the Limit,” a single that took on a somber tone with the hip-hop giant’s tragic death.

John Legend covered “Open Your Eyes” in 2013. Hip-hop group Little Brother sampled the classic for its 2019 track “Sittin Alone.” In 2016, U.K. R&B singer Ella Mai sampled “My Flame” for her song “One Day.” And five years later, Snoh Aalegra released a remake of “What You Won’t Do For Love.”

Still, Caldwell relished jumping out of the box.

His Caribbean-infused “Jamaica” (1982) could have been mistaken for the much parodied Yacht Rock sound of the 1970s and early 1980s. But Caldwell was really giving a nod to Stevie Wonder’s blissfully elegant “Rocket Love.” He co-wrote the chart-topping 1986 pop ballad “Next Time I Fall” for Chicago’s Peter Cetera and Amy Grant. In the 1990s, Caldwell drew inspiration from the Great American songbook, recording standards made famous by his childhood heroes Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. And in 2015, he formed the genre-merging duo Cool Uncle with Grammy-winning music producer Jack Splash (who worked with Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Kendrick Lamar).

Even after his death, followers of the artist continued to embrace that authenticity. “What y’all cookin for Bobby Caldwell’s repast?” a fan asked on Twitter, a heartfelt nod to the tradition of bringing food to a gathering following the death of a loved one. “I got the greens and pound cake.”

“On my mind be murder-murder, I’m urgin’ to serve a busta that is flexing his s—/ Never underestimate the ones that be like quiet, ’cause they be the ones that’ll click…” Mitchell rapped. 

Mitchell, who was found dead in her hometown of Memphis, Tenn. over the weekend, not only held her own with her Three 6 Mafia group mates — sometimes even unleashing harder lyrics than her male counterparts — she also exhibited effortless command of the group’s triple cadence rhyme style. Yet it was her star-making turn on the remix to the group’s controversial breakout single “Tear da Club Up” that vaulted Gangsta Boo into the spotlight. It was banned in venues across the south for inspiring riots.

In 1998, Mitchell’s hit single, “Where dem Dollas At!?” from her debut album Enquiring Minds, created a new hip-hop archetype: the hustling, game-spitting, hell-raising chick who would inspire female rappers for decades to come. “It be amazing how these b—-es havin’ babies by n—-s, with no pot to piss in or no money to give her,” she observed in her trademark straight-no-chaser swag. “What the f—, why you hoes wanna live that way?” 

Mitchell’s influence is nearly impossible to avoid in today’s rap landscape, whether you’re listening to Latto and GloRilla, superstars Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, rising Memphis rapper Duke Deuce or newcomers like Ace Queezy. “She created a road, a blueprint,” said friend and collaborator Nick Hook, who first began touring with Mitchell as her DJ before teaming up with her on the 2020 track “I’m Fresh.” “She should be getting publishing on the radio 25 million times a day.” 

Cherise Johnson, who curates the popular live performance series UPROXX Sessions, welcomed Mitchell on the show just last month. “I had been begging Adam Weiss, who books [our segment] with me and our director Lee Shaner, to have her on UPROXX Sessions,” she said. “The show usually leans more young, but Boo still has this effect. I know what she means to all the rap girls today who have shown her love unprovoked. They all got their confidence from Gangsta Boo. Her tone and flow has been used so much. I don’t know if people recognize Gangsta Boo is where it’s coming from.”

Authorities are investigating the circumstances of Mitchell’s death at 43, but police said there were no immediate signs of foul play. Mitchell’s mother, Veronica Mitchell, asked for privacy as the family grieves. “The Mitchell family would like to thank everyone for their condolences regarding the untimely death of Lola ‘Gangsta Boo’ Mitchell,” a statement read. “The family is asking for your continued prayers and privacy as we process the loss of our loved one.”

Perhaps we can take solace in knowing that while Gangsta Boo was alive, she felt the love from fans and artists alike. She recently appeared on the remix to Latto’s “FTCU,” telling Billboard in December, “I thought that was dope how she is bridging the gap. She was like, “You know what? The song is already done but f— that. I still want Gangsta Boo on this motherf—er.”

Mitchell also showed love to fellow Memphis rapper, GloRilla. “They say, ‘Gangsta Boo walked so a lot of people can run,’” Mitchell said of the rising star who was nominated for a Grammy this year. “If this is a moment to say that particular quote, I would f—– say it because [GloRilla] took off full speed.” 

After Mitchell died, GloRilla shared a tribute to the Grind City trailblazer on Instagram. “I normally don’t post screenshots but the fact that she reached out to me before anybody else had a clue who I was,” she wrote. “She always supported me & the girls way back before we blew up. A REAL LEGEND. There will never be another Gangsta Boo.”

Indeed, the salt-of-the-earth spitter never mailed it in — from her first appearance on DJ Paul’s 1994 ode to the sticky icky, “Cheefa Da Reefa;” Three Six Mafia’s freaky “Late Night Tip;” her bruising album cut “Don’t Stand So Close, or her song-ripping statement on Three 6 Mafia’s platinum anthem “Who Run It,” Gangsta Boo always showed up and showed out. 

Mitchell also paid it forward. She lived in Los Angeles, but often returned to Memphis to support the local hip-hop scene, even in the most dangerous of environments. 

“We were in a shootout in Memphis together once,” said Hook. “We went to this show showcasing 20 young rappers. At some point there were some gunshots fired in the air. All of a sudden we are running. They put us back in the kitchen. Kids were jumping over the fences and s—. And we were hiding next to a freezer.” Hook paused before adding, “We really lost a real queen.” 

For years there has been a spirited debate over who holds the crown in the south. It could be argued that New Orleans legend and No Limit Records standout Mia X has as much a claim to be Queen of the South as Gangsta Boo — the pair appeared alongside rapper Foxy Brown on “B.W.A” But while Mia X embraced her role as a wise truth teller from the ‘hood, Gangsta Boo was just as likely to give the middle finger to misogynistic incels as she was to extol the debauchery of sex, drugs and hip-hop, respectability politics be damned.

Gangsta Boo changed the trajectory of hip-hop during a time in the 1990s when women were finally stepping into the spotlight in a genre dominated by men. The daughters of Sha-Rock, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Yo-Yo were ambitious, brilliant, wild, and free. Da Brat wore baggy jeans and sneakers, smoked as much weed as Snoop, and could battle rap with the best of them. Lil’ Kim found power in her sexuality, earning her platinum plaques, endorsement deals and a string of acolytes. Foxy Brown reveled in being a “boss bitch,” and the socially conscious Lauryn Hill was as lyrically gifted and revered as anyone in hip-hop. Missy Elliott blew our minds with her groundbreaking sounds, music videos, and behind the scenes work as a writer/producer/arranger. Jean Grae was the steady underground heroine we didn’t deserve, while Eve, Philly’s self-proclaimed “pitbull in a skirt,” more than held her own with Ruff Ryders heavyweights DMX and the Lox.

Gangsta Boo, though, defied categories with her, at times, too-real around-the-way persona. This most likely explains why she chopped it up in the studio with everyone from Outkast, E-40, TI and Gucci Mane to Eminem and Run The Jewels. Gangsta Boo was a genre unto herself, and many of the biggest stars in rap offered tributes to the late star.

Three 6 Mafia’s DJ Paul and Juicy J both posted on Instagram about their former bandmate — one a captionless photo of the rapper on the turntables; the other, a shot of J and Boo, punctuated by broken hearted emoji for the girl they recruited as a 14-year old kid after spotting her rapping at a high school talent show. Gangsta Boo was always the youngest of the crew, but she never took a backseat to any of the boys. Even when she broke away from Three 6 Mafia in 2002, over what she described as constant disrespect and business disputes, Juicy J still praised Mitchell. “She’s Memphis to the fullest,” he said back in 2012. “I love Gangsta Boo.”  

In fact, Mitchell reunited with her Three 6 Mafia family in 2013 and again in 2021 for a Verzuz showdown against longtime rivals Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. During the Verzuz performance, watching Mitchell and Three 6 Mafia nearly come to blows with the Cleveland group only added to her legend.

Throughout her life, Mitchell had been up front about her bouts with depression. Her disillusionment with the music business led her to a spiritual conversion and she changed her name to Lady Boo amid a brief battle with substance abuse (she later returned to her original moniker). The 2013 death of Three 6 Mafia member Lord Infamous and later her father also tested her resolve. But Mitchell channeled that pain, along with humor, joy and outright ratchetness, into her music.

Mitchell’s friends and family remain protective of her legacy. “We have a lot of unreleased songs we did together,” Hook said. “Right now I’m going through all my pictures and videos. I realize that part of that responsibility is for Lola’s legacy to continue to shine. I have tons of unreleased songs with her. That was our plan the whole time to release a record. And it’s not just me. DJ Paul, Juicy J… we are all in charge of Gangsta Boo archives.”

Her music may be in the right hands, but Mitchell cemented her legacy years ago just by being her authentic self. “So many people [have] been f—ing with me for so long and throughout my career, ups and downs,” she said during a Facebook Live interview a few years ago. ”That’s why I’m right here with y’all right now. I ain’t got no dress on, I ain’t comb my hair today, I ain’t put no makeup on or nothing, but I’m f—ing with y’all because that’s what real bitches do.”

Sean Combs hated it. The Howard University dropout and charismatic party promoter-turned-Uptown Records executive was overseeing a recording session for the newly crowned queen of hip-hop soul Mary J. Blige. The track in question was a remix of his protégé’s fourth single, “Love No Limit,” from her 1992 landmark debut, What’s The 411?

“That’s not it,” said the then-24-year-old producer who was becoming more frequently known as Puff Daddy. 

These days the kids know Combs as the jet-setting mogul painting the world red with 28-year-old rapper Yung Miami of the City Girls and seemingly competing with TV host Nick Cannon to repopulate the world in his own image. But back then, he was striving to become the king of the remix, and he wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfection.

“Now I’m mad,” recalled Glenn K. Bolton. Known in the music world as Daddy-O, Bolton was one of the founders of rap’s first hip-hop band, Stetsasonic, and co-produced the track with Combs. He had initially built Blige’s “Love No Limit” remix around a replayed portion of the Gap Band’s “Outstanding” from 1982.

“That’s when I grabbed Keni Burke’s ‘Risin’ to the Top,’ ” Bolton said. “And Puff says, ‘That’s it!’ I tried to tell him that the song had already been sampled a bunch of times, but Puff was like, ‘I don’t give a f—. We using that one.’ ”

Combs, who would single-handedly remake the standard remix in his own audacious, can’t-stop-won’t-stop image, wasn’t done. During the session, Blige’s then-boyfriend and Jodeci vocalist K-Ci Hailey and Dave Tolliver of Men at Large were riffing on the chorus in the background. Combs promptly directed them to go into the recording booth.

“Now I want you to resing the entire song,” Combs instructed Blige, giving “Love No Limit” a looser, strutting arrangement. “It worked,” Bolton said.

Before Combs was famously fired by mentor and Uptown head Andre Harrell; before he founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, introducing the world to the Notorious B.I.G., and the so-called East Coast versus West Coast rap war tragically claimed the lives of two former friends; before Combs and Bad Boy ascended from the ashes, eventually selling more than 400 million records; before the name changes, his triumphant turn to fashion and his reinvention as a liquor-brand savant; before Combs established his own cable TV network and reached billionaire status — he just wanted to make everybody dance.

Combs’ weapon of choice was the remix, a tool he had earlier used in 1992 for an EPMD-inspired flip of Jodeci’s “Come and Talk to Me.” The following year Combs masterminded a hip-hop-infused version of dancehall reggae artist Super Cat’s frisky “Dolly My Baby.” Blige and a then-unknown Notorious B.I.G. were among the featured players. But it was their inspired pairing on the Combs/Daddy-O collaborative remix of her 1992 hit “Real Love” that was a revelation.

Inspired by the R&B and hip-hop blends of Harlem’s DJ Ron G (who introduces Blige on the track), the Combs-directed reimagining of “Real Love” became the centerpiece of Blige’s influential What’s The 411? Remix album. “Look up in the sky it’s a bird, it’s a plane, nope, it’s Mary J, ain’t a damn thing changed,” Notorious B.I.G. proclaimed on an upbeat track that combined the bluesy guitar riff from Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman,” a sampled drum break from Lafayette Afro Rock Band’s obscure 1973 composition “Hihache,” and embellishments from Uptown’s session keyboardist Avon Marshall.

By 1995, the Notorious B.I.G. was a superstar. His Bad Boy debut Ready To Die had already sold more than 2 million copies and Combs was looking to run up the score on the heels of Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear” remix produced by Easy Mo Bee. (Notorious B.I.G. was the standout on the posse cut that also featured LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes.). But there was one problem. The Notorious B.I.G.’s next single, “One More Chance,” was wildly explicit.

For Combs there was little margin for error. This was hip-hop’s second golden era, when celebrated producers such as Pete Rock (Public Enemy’s “Shut ’Em Down”), Q-Tip (Nas’ “The World Is Yours”), Organized Noize (OutKast’s “Player’s Ball”), RZA (Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s “All I Need”) and Dr. Dre (2Pac’s “California Love”) were cranking out remixes that were as good and often better than the original.

Combs got to work. He tapped Rashad Smith, a member of Bad Boy’s storied production team The Hitmen, which included Deric “D-Dot” Angelettie, Carlos Broady, Nashiem Myrick, Ron “Amen-Ra” Lawrence, Mario Winans, and Stevie J, to deliver an addictive loop lifted from DeBarge’s 1983 deep album cut “Stay With Me.” Combs then orchestrated Notorious B.I.G.’s laid-back, playboy flow, adding background vocals from Wallace’s wife and Bad Boy artist Faith Evans and the ever-present Blige.

The “One More Chance” remix instantly became another platinum-seller for the Notorious B.I.G. Yet while Combs’ commercial-or-bust mantra often made him an easy target for hip-hop purists, Jermaine Hall, who has written extensively about Bad Boy’s blazing run, said Combs was being guided by a more personal motive. Combs was a product of the 1980s and early 1990s when rap still took a back seat to R&B on playlists, immortalized on Ice Cube’s fiery 1990 middle finger “Turn Off the Radio.”

“Back then, hip-hop was largely relegated to late-night mix shows,” said Hall, a former music journalist and current CEO and founder of LEVEL, a culture publication aimed at Black men. “The songs that we loved were just not in regular rotation on the radio the way that they are now. Puff’s mentality, even pre-Bad Boy, was that the music that I’m going to make is intended for a mass audience. And no one is going to tell me that you can only hear my music at 11 p.m. or later.”

Besides, Combs was too busy rewriting the rules. From the Nashiem Myrick co-produced 112 remix of “Only You,” featuring an in-his-prime Notorious B.I.G. and a newly signed Ma$e to the Puff Daddy/D-Dot-arranged 1997 all-star “It’s All About the Benjamins,” Combs’ retouches became the standard for producers looking to move the crowd.

“We had a knack for that,” said Myrick of the mystique that elevated the Bad Boy remix. “I didn’t even realize what we were doing at the time. I guess working under Puff you get that way. (Laughs.) You never got too overzealous about your work around him.”

But while Combs had final say over his productions, he was well aware that the Bad Boy sound was only as dynamic as the collective. “The Hitmen believed in me and my leadership, so you had that cohesive sound. So it’s coming from one brain; our collective brain,” Combs explained on Netflix’s docuseries Hip-Hop Evolution. 

Yet, contrary to the title of his platinum 2002 compilation album, Combs and crew did not invent the remix. It originated in the late 1960s in Jamaica, where reggae and dub producers would take out vocals and instrumental parts to create updated “versions” of songs for MCs to toast lyrics over. Meanwhile, at New York’s Fire Island, DJ Tom Moulton was trying to figure out a way to extend the length of a song to keep revelers on the dance floor. He started using a razor blade to cut up audiotape to create longer songs, essentially forming the template for the modern-day remix.

The mainstream rise of disco, first innovated in NYC’s underground gay club scene by Black and Latino spinners, ushered in the release of Double Exposure’s 1976 game changer “Ten Percent,” the first commercially available 12-inch single, constructed by DJ Walter Gibbons. By the 1980s and early 1990s, the remix had become ubiquitous, from the 1984 Jocelyn Brown jam “Somebody Else’s Guy” to Teddy Riley’s 1993 “Human Nature” remix of SWV’s “Right Here.”

But it was amid the innovations by house music DJs and the zenith of rap’s sampling explosion that the remix truly came of age. The game-changing reel-to-reel tape editing of dance music giant Frankie Knuckles planted the seeds for the ubiquitous “house remix” as A-listers such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston began commissioning sweat-inducing dance club songs. Soon everyone from alternative pop duo Everything but the Girl to piano rocker Tori Amos were using remixes to broaden their reach. By the late 1980s, hip-hop giants such as Boogie Down Productions, De La Soul, LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, and Salt-N-Pepa began releasing rearranged classics. Combs was soaking it all in.

Still, the recording industry largely viewed the remix as a tool to extend the life of a single in the marketplace for another four or five weeks. “Puff wasn’t interested in that,” said Bolton. “He was going after that young, ’90s New York club feel. Puff wanted his songs to be played at places like the Tunnel, where all the hustlers would be. He would say, ‘Yo, if we are being played there, we are doing something right!’ ”

And the supercompetitive Combs was more than willing to spread the love outside his crew. When pop star Mariah Carey rebelled against the machine and pushed for a more street-sounding vibe, Combs pulled off music’s most unlikely team, adding Wu-Tang Clan wild man Ol’ Dirty Bastard to the track for a funky “Genius of Love”-propelled remix of “Fantasy.”

“I laid down the track and put a little twist on it by changing the pitch,” said Myrick, who was assigned to transform “Fantasy.” “It was a straight sample of the Tom Tom Club. And then Puff came up with the idea to bring ODB on the remix. That’s his genius. You have to understand when Puff works with people, he’s like LeBron [James]. He makes everyone around him better. People want to be at their best ability when they are working with Puff, whether it’s Mariah or ODB.”

The implausible union scored Carey her ninth No. 1 single and the first by a female artist to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100. More than two decades later, the enduring 1981 “Genius of Love” sample would fuel Atlanta rapper Latto’s breakthrough top three Billboard Hot 100 hit “Big Energy” in April and Carey even joined her on the remix.

In 1996, Combs transformed Gina Thompson’s sluggish “The Things That You Do” into a dance floor favorite, complete with a Bob James “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” sample and an otherworldly appearance by Missy Elliott. That same year, hip-hop’s Supa Dupa Fly game changer appeared on another Combs remix for rapper MC Lyte’s “Cold Rock a Party.”

“Puffy was trying to explain to Sylvia Rhone [then CEO of Elektra Entertainment Group] why every mix for every type of club had to be done,” Lyte told me in 2011 for a Vibe retrospective of her career. “When I got to the studio, Missy was there. She had already laid down her verse, the harmonies and the hook. She’s just like Puffy. They get the bigger picture in terms of the track. ‘Cold Rock a Party’ sold 2.5 million records internationally, which was the most for me. I think I did 1.5 million with ‘Keep on Keepin’ On’ before that. But with ‘Cold Rock … ’ that was another dimension.”

Combs was bigger than ever, emboldened by his 1996 album No Way Out, which has sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. But there was a backlash. When Combs remixed and rapped on the revered KRS-One’s enthralling 1997 ode to hip-hop “Step Into a World,” critics and longtime followers of the Blastmaster responded to the tepid rendering with pitchforks. The raw club element that was so essential to the success of his earlier remixes had taken a back seat to a more listless, cookie-cutter approach. Combs returned to form with the 2002 remix of G-Dep’s “Special Delivery,” which attempted to recapture the vibe of the “Flavor In Your Ear” remix.

Today the power of the remix has dramatically waned, a victim of the TikTok age. Instead of creating new beats for remixes, artists simply ask others to hop on tracks. But Combs, now 53, isn’t ready to dance off gently into that good night. In the remix video for his latest single “Gotta Move On,” he’s still the proverbial life of the party. But the receipts are there for anyone who wants to understand why Combs remains the king of the remix.

“I hear people say that Puffy is not a real producer,” Bolton said. “Yeah, Puff has some f—ed up things about him, but his ear for production … he was born with it. There’s no musical training there. Puff didn’t do a remix just to say it was a damn remix. Sonically he knew at the end of the day those Bad Boy records were going to sound better than anything else in the club.”

At times, Cara exhibited a Broadway-trained, showbiz DNA that seemed more aligned with singer Barbara Streisand than queen of soul Aretha Franklin. Yet she never shied away from her true superpower: the ability to transform slick early ’80s, headband-adorned anthems into uplifting statements that felt like spiritual testimony.

“I’m gonna make it to heaven/Light up the sky like a flame,” Cara proclaimed on her 1980 debut single, Fame, from director Alan Parker’s Oscar-nominated musical of the same name. The film followed the trials, tribulations and triumphs of students at New York’s legendary High School of the Performing Arts (now known as Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). Cara’s work on Fame earned her a top 5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, two Oscar nominations (including for the piano ballad “Out Here on My Own”) and Grammy Awards for best female pop vocal performance and best original new artist. And she proved to be more than just a singer who dared you to take your eyes off her during the post-disco “Hot Lunch Jam” rave-up and Fame’s landmark street dance sequence.

Cara received a Golden Globe nomination for best actress for her portrayal as Fame’s optimistic yet naive Coco Hernandez (her final scene remains one of that decade’s most heartbreaking cinematic moments). “The movie was shot about six blocks from my apartment,” Cara recalled in a 2018 interview with Songwriter Universe. “So working on the movie felt very much like home.”

In 1981, no star shined brighter than Cara, one of a constellation of Black entertainers and athletes who reached unprecedented crossover popularity throughout the ’80s. From Cara, singers Michael Jackson, Prince and Lionel Richie; Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan; and actor Eddie Murphy to singers Whitney Houston, Tina Turner; comedian Bill Cosby; hip-hop group Run-D.M.C.; TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey; and boxer Mike Tyson — white America was eager to elevate these gifted figures – on its own terms. All of a sudden, popular Black stars transcended race.

It was clear that Cara wanted no part of that game. When the subject of her biracial heritage came up during a 1981 Jet magazine cover story, the Afro Latina star, born Irene Escalera on March 18, 1959, didn’t mince words. “We have a tendency in this country that when we say Black it automatically means Black Americans,” said Cara, whose musician father Gaspar was Black and Puerto Rican and her mother Louise was Cuban American. “But that’s a big mistake, and that keeps us divided … I happen to be a Black Hispanic person who was born in this country.”

Soon Cara, who had already released two studio albums including her debut Anyone Can See, would experience the kind of next-level stardom that few Black entertainers during that period achieved. In 1984 she won the Academy Award for best original song as one of the co-writers of “Flashdance … What a Feeling,” from the soundtrack album for Flashdance, the movie that put actress Jennifer Beals on the map. “Take your passion/And make it happen!” sang Cara, who would also receive a Grammy in 1984 for best pop vocal performance, female, spending six consecutive weeks at No. 1.

“Thank you brilliant Irene for your open heart and your fearless triple threat talent,” Beals posted on Instagram in tribute to Cara. “It took a beautiful dreamer to write and perform the soundtracks for those who dare to dream.”

Such glowing words are a fitting tribute for an artist who started performing at a young age. At 7, Cara, who grew up in a family of musicians, made her professional debut singing and dancing on local television. Two years later, she landed a Broadway gig in the 1968 production of Maggie Flynn alongside future The Wiz star and singer Stephanie Mills and Emmy-nominated actor Giancarlo Esposito. And she scored a coveted spot on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in July 1971.

More television gigs followed. Cara was cast on the PBS children’s show The Electric Company and on Roots: The Next Generations. But it was Cara’s titular role in the 1976 movie classic Sparkle that introduced her to seemingly every Black household in America. In 1978, she appeared in the Broadway musical revue Ain’t Misbehavin’. Record labels were soon calling, and Cara began racking up studio session work as a background vocalist for disco singer Vicki Sue Robinson, musician Lou Reed, keyboardist George Duke, and disco singer Evelyn “Champagne” King. Cara’s friend Luther Vandross, who rose through the ranks of the music industry with her long before they became stars, recorded a cover of her 1982 track “Anyone Can See.”

Cara’s industry connections later proved to be beneficial during the recording of some pivotal compositions. “I brought a lot of New York’s greatest session singers to Michael [Fame composer Michael Gore],” she said in a 2020 Shondaland feature celebrating the 40th anniversary of Fame. “He didn’t know Luther Vandross. I did. He didn’t know about Vicki Sue Robinson. I did. Michael wasn’t in with all the badass session players and singers that I knew. I never got any money for it. Never got acknowledged. I wrote ‘Hot Lunch’ to this very cool bassline that he came up with — that was the whole damn song.”

By the mid-1980s, the consensus was that Cara’s trajectory was limitless. She followed up her “Flashdance …” collaboration with synth-pop pioneer Giorgio Moroder with the 1984 top 40 single “Breakdance,” and co-starred in the Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds gangster comedy flick City Heat. There was even talk of headlining her own sitcom.

But following her worldwide acclaim, Cara suffered a career spiral, a victim of what she described as industry blacklisting.

In 1985, Cara sued Al Coury Inc. and Network Records for $10 million for songwriting credit and unpaid royalties for her work on the Flashdance soundtrack, years before Prince’s game-changing legal dispute with Warner Bros. over his master recordings. “I’ll never be that trusting again,” she confided to People magazine in 2001, “believing accountants and lawyers have my best interests at heart.”

Cara eventually was awarded $1.5 million by a California jury in 1993, but the damage was already done. “All of a sudden, I was hearing stories about how difficult I was to work with, ridiculous rumors about drugs and what a diva I was,” she recalled.

Cara returned to her musical roots in 1992 in the revival for Jesus Christ Superstar and continued to perform overseas and in America on the club circuit. And she never stopped writing and recording. During a 2019 episode of her podcast The Back Story, Cara broke down her artistic process. “Very naked, just vocal and piano and a great lyric and a great story within the lyric, those are the kinds of songs I relate to as a songwriter,” she said. 

How fitting was it that upon her death a strikingly diverse range of mourners sang her praises from Fame co-star and groundbreaking television director Debbie Allen and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea to the Roots’ Questlove and veteran Tony-nominated Latino actor John Leguizamo. And as singer-songwriter Lenny Kravitz said, “Irene Cara, you inspired me more than you could ever know.”

Same, Lenny. Same. 

His sophomore release, Kaleidoscope Dream, was a personal and professional gamble for the then-25-year-old. His first record, a scrappy slow burner, sold modestly. Still, he bristled at attempts by Jive Records executives to push him to play the role of the prototypical crooner of the day (see: Bobby Valentino or Trey Songz). He wanted to make his own way.

Miguel, born Miguel Jontel Pimentel, was raised by a Mexican American father and an African American mother in San Pedro, California. On All I Want is You, he sounded more in his element on the sad boy, electro soul sound of “Girls Like You” than he was on the dance number “To the Moon.” “With my first album, not only was I being misunderstood, I was misunderstood, and it was distracting people from the music,” he told The Fader in November 2012. “Now, I want to make sure that everything I do is the best, most rounded projection of who I really am.” And that projection would be sexy, profane, whimsical, and, at times, dark.

Sept. 25 marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Kaleidoscope Dream, an album in which Miguel shared the adventurous genre-jumping that had Donny Hathaway, Radiohead, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie, Prince, Grace Jones, Sade, Jodeci, M83 and The Knife all sharing space in his playlist.

The album showcased an artist entering his prime as a vocalist, lyricist, producer, and musician. By December 2012, Kaleidoscope Dream was on a plethora of year-end “best of” lists (topping a ranking from NPR and No. 5 in the Village Voice’s long-running Pazz & Jop top 100).

“The thing I noticed early on was Miguel loved playing his guitar,” said bassist and Platinum Sound founder Jerry “Wonda” Duplessis, whose warm production can be heard on Kaleidoscope Dream. “I love artists who play instruments. And I love artists who are strong songwriters. That’s Miguel. His music puts you in a zone … in his world. That dude is magical.”

A decade after the album’s release, RCA Records president Mark Pitts, who signed Miguel to his ByStorm Entertainment imprint in 2007 when Pitts was president of urban music at Jive, is still raving about Kaleidoscope Dream and its first single, “Adorn,” which was originally introduced on Miguel’s Art Dealer Chic EP series in early 2012.

“I remember the first time I heard ‘Adorn,’ ” Pitts recalled of the triple platinum hit that sounds like it worships at the altar of Marvin Gaye’s 1982 classic “Sexual Healing.” Miguel wrote, produced and recorded it in his home studio in 2011, inspired by his love affair with actress and future wife Nazanin Mandi. His tone is feathery, but there’s some throwback 1970s soul vamping going on as well, especially during the orgasmic, falsetto climax (“You got to know, baby, oh, you gotta know/That I adorn you!”).

“I was on the West Side Highway, and it struck me with such force that I called Miguel immediately,” Pitts recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t care what you send me after this …’ That’s how profound of an effect it had on me. His voice is unlike anything else — it’s an instrument. It’s layered with so many complexities. I knew ‘Adorn’ was the jump-off to something spectacular.”

“Adorn” spent a record 22 weeks at No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart, was nominated for song of the year at the Grammys, and picked up the award for best R&B song. And both Nick Jonas (“Jealous”) and Harry Styles (“Adore You”) owe Miguel publishing money.

Yet to truly understand why Kaleidoscope Dream is the best R&B album of 2012, you have to go back to the time it dropped. Back then, music journalists were all too eager to tag Miguel as an “alternative R&B” visionary alongside other so-called Black music outliers such as Janelle Monáe, the Weeknd, Melanie Fiona, and Frank Ocean. This was a strange era when the Euro electronic dance music movement had the record industry in a chokehold – so much so that even members of R&B royalty such as Usher waved the white flag, recording the stadium-ready single “Scream.”

Miguel, however, possessed something that his onetime rival Frank Ocean didn’t: Drop-dead gorgeous vocals. And according to an October 2012 write-up in The Washington Post, he also saw himself walking the same risk-taking path as soul pioneer Sam Cooke, who challenged listeners with the civil rights era statement “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and The Temptations, who flipped Motown’s assembly-line formula with the gritty, near seven-minute soul opera “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” “There was a time when there was room for individuality in R&B, and people had their own thing,” he said then.

One could argue that Kaleidoscope Dream is the bookend to Prince’s landmark 1980 line-in-the-sand revelation Dirty Mind. On the acoustic song “P—-y is Mine,” Miguel takes notes from his hero’s gift for making outrageously nasty overtures sound downright sincere. “Well, could you just lie to me, lie to me, lie to me so sweet?” he implores amid a bedroom tryst, showing a vulnerability rarely seen in today’s steely R&B.

Miguel’s opener “Don’t Look Back,” nods to the Purple One’s kinky keyboard synthesizer, sparse arrangements and stacked harmonies on 1984’s game-changing “When Doves Cry.” The title track “Kaleidoscope Dream,” which samples Labi Siffre’s 1975 track “I Got The …” (made famous by Eminem’s 1999 hit “My Name Is”), sounds like Miguel took a class in Beat Generation scribe William Burroughs’ surrealist cut up method writing style (“I taste you/Infinite colors/Collide in a fountain/Amidst all the lovers …”).

Meanwhile, the infectious Salaam Remi orchestrated “How Many Drinks?,” featuring a verse from Compton, California’s hip-hop laureate Kendrick Lamar, is about as cocky as a man can get on a song and still be likable. On “Candles in the Sun,” Miguel worries about a cruel world where babies are addicted to crack, heroes get shot, and war, street, and white-collar criminals go riding off into the sunset.

But it’s the provocative soul-pop masterpiece “Do You …” that’s peak “lovable jerk” Miguel. Bro throws in a pickup line that’s both sordid and laughably wholesome. “Do you like drugs? … Do you like hugs?” Is this guy for real?

“He’s for real,” said Duplessis, who co-produced the track. “We locked ourselves in the studio for that one. I don’t think anyone else would have worded it that way.”

Kaleidoscope Dream would eventually sell more than 1 million copies. Suddenly, he was touring with Alicia Keys and getting calls from Smokey Robinson and Mariah Carey. Years later, Miguel’s Kaleidoscope Dream is an essential part of the decade’s pantheon of R&B masterpieces, which include Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales, Ari Lennox’s Shea Butter Baby and Summer Walker’s Over It, as well as more recent triumphs such as Lucky Daye’s Painted, Steve Lacy’s Gemini Rights and Beyoncé’s Renaissance.

Last year, Miguel released another installment of his Art Dealer Chic series. He’s still the restless spirit who will surprise you with a soulful cover of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ deep album cut “Porcelain” and then disappear. But his 2012 offering to the R&B gods will always be around to turn a new generation on.“It gave R&B another classic,” Pitts said. “We have rap albums like Ready to Die that soundtracked our lives, but we don’t have a lot of them in [modern] R&B – they’re numbered. Kaleidoscope Dream has earned its inclusion.”

DJ Farley “Jackmaster” Funk had reached local celebrity status as one of the genre’s most revered figures with fellow pioneers Jesse Saunders, Chip E., Steve “Silk” Hurley, Marshall Jefferson, Ron Hardy and the godfather of house, Frankie Knuckles. Over the years, their impact would stretch far beyond the Windy City and influence artists for decades to come.

When Beyoncé surprised fans back in June with her love letter to house, “Break My Soul” (from her seventh studio album Renaissance, out now), it shined much-needed light on the genre’s Black DNA — right down to its sublime sample of the Robin S. 1993 club classic “Show Me Love.” “Break My Soul” — and the rest of Beyoncé’s dance-heavy new album, which pays homage to the genre — comes soon after the release of Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind, a bold (and at times confounding) house set that yearns for the freedom of the genre’s earliest days.

“House allowed people to be whatever they wanted to be,” said Farley, 60, who back in the early ’80s was heard by more than 1 million listeners a week on WBMX in Chicago as a charter member of the DJ collective the Hot Mix 5. “It was competitive, but we were bringing folks together. There’s a reason there’s no such thing as gangster house. House music has always been about love.”

Indeed, during his four-year run as resident conductor at the storied nightspot the Playground, Farley witnessed Black, white, Latino, LGBTQ and straight kids peacefully converge on the dance floor for a feverish workout. House was ’hood. House was gay. House was avant-garde. House had its own signature dance (a sexually suggestive move called “jacking”) and by 1985-1986, its own fashion trends (baggy Girbaud jeans, parachute pants, colorful printed shirts, Zodiac shoes, high-top fades, Coca-Cola sweatshirts …).

House ruled. Yet it was still largely a Chicago phenomenon. That changed with the Farley, Saunders and Vince Lawrence collaboration “Love Can’t Turn Around,” a joyous romp that ignited house music’s golden era, which ran from 1986 to 1993, when the genre was at its coolest, Blackest and queerest peak. A nod to Hurley’s raw, keyboard reworking of Isaac Hayes’ 1975 disco gem “I Can’t Turn Around,” the track featured Darryl Pandy, an unabashedly flamboyant belter who wore his gospel roots on the sleeve of his green sparkling top.

By August 1986, “Love Can’t Turn Around” became the first house record to cross the Atlantic, cracking the top 10 of the British pop charts. Farley and Pandy were promptly booked on an international flight.

“Nothing prepared us for how this totally different culture loved us because of our music,” Farley recalled of that ’86 U.K. trip, which planted the seeds for Britain’s “Second Summer of Love” house and rave craze two years later. “People were taking me to places like Kensington Palace to see where Queen Victoria resided. We were doing interviews with all the trade and music magazines, being treated like stars.”

Today, such wide-eyed recollections sound quaint given how massive electronic dance music (EDM) has become. According to the Ibiza International Music Summit business report, EDM grossed $4.5 billion globally last year, with multimillion earnings by white producers and festival DJs such as Calvin Harris, Tiësto and David Guetta. House music’s urban roots have largely been relegated to a footnote — until this year.

“It’s like Beyoncé and Drake are validating us in a way,” said Crystal Waters. Decades ago, Waters recorded one of the genre’s most celebrated songs, “Gypsy Woman.” Despite its catchy earworm chorus (“La da dee la da da …”), Waters wrote the lyrics to her 1991 Basement Boys-produced classic to shine a light on homelessness about a real-life woman on the streets who was “just like you and me.” But not everyone got the message.

“Back then we got beat up by the press,” Waters remembered. “I would hear, ‘When are you going to do real music? This isn’t going to last.’ It was really hard to stand up and say, ‘Hey, I’m a house artist!’ Now for it to come back around, it makes me very proud to look back and see how much we did, what we started and to be a part of this culture.”

House got its name in 1983 from the style of music blasting out of Chicago’s predominantly Black and queer south side club The Warehouse. DJ Knuckles oversaw the hottest marathon dance party on the planet where the Bronx, New York, native was creating the template for house music with his signature reel-to-reel tape edits of ’70s disco throwbacks such as Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Bad Luck” and First Choice’s “Let No Man Put Asunder.” Soon, other DJs were constructing innovative dance escapes with an emerging technological weapon: the drum machine.

The genre-shifting contributions of these artists cannot be overstated. Seminal Chicago dance imprint Trax Records released Jefferson’s celebratory 1986 breakthrough “Move Your Body.” The piano-heavy groove was instantly adopted as the official house anthem at dance clubs across the country and overseas. In January 1987, Hurley bested his former roommate Farley, topping the British charts with the infectious “Jack Your Body.” And singer/songwriter Jamie Principle made his commercial debut with his dark synth masterpiece “Your Love,” produced by Knuckles.

That same year, Phuture dropped “Acid Tracks,” a synthesizer-propelled instrumental that offered a glimpse of the coming radical acid house onslaught. Radio DJ-turned-club howler Xaviera Gold scored her first dance hit as lead on Ralphi Rosario’s brooding dance floor go-to “You Used to Hold Me.” Meanwhile, Joe Smooth took a more soulful turn on his house classic “Promised Land,” an uplifting spiritual that envisioned a life where brothers and sisters would finally be “free from fighting, violence, people crying in the street.”

House started to evolve beyond its Chicago origins when Detroit native Derrick May unveiled his symphonic chaos on wax, “Strings of Life,” the first techno record. On the East Coast, Tony Humphries, KISS-FM’s powerful tastemaker and resident DJ at New Jersey’s Club Zanzibar, became the central figure in the region’s soulful house sound in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The Garden State was now a hub for house, which even made inroads into New York’s burgeoning hip-hop scene.

“We got invited to appear on a song produced by Todd Terry, who wanted to put a different spin on what was coming out the New York club scene,” recalled Mike G, member of the influential hip-hop act Jungle Brothers. “Brooklyn was becoming known for house music, so it was really a no-brainer for us.”

The result of the 1988 pairing was the top 30 Billboard Hot Dance music triumph “I’ll House You,” a genre-blurring concoction that defined “hip-house.” (Beyoncé referenced the track on the song “Summer Renaissance” from her latest album.) With the group’s irreverent rhymes and Terry’s hard-hitting beats, turntable scratches and hip-hop-style sampling that mined everything from a snippet of rap giants Run-D.M.C. to a collage of house music jams, it became the Jungle Brothers’ biggest-selling single. Other emcees such as Doug Lazy, KC Flight and even MC Lyte, Queen Latifah and De La Soul joined the party.

“You had people saying that house music was gay,” Mike G said. “But we were like, ‘Man, get off that hate.’ The Jungle Brothers’ philosophy was if you could enjoy the music, that’s all that mattered.”

House inevitably drew the attention of major record companies. Ten City, anchored by the soaring falsetto of Byron Stingily, signed with Atlantic Records, releasing its No. 1 Billboard dance single “That’s the Way Love Is.” Lil Louis’ epic-backed “French Kiss” became a top 50 Billboard pop hit and European chart fixture, despite its controversial, orgasmic vocals that had censors scrambling for the mute button. Virgin EMI scooped up Detroit’s Inner City, a concept act that soared on Black radio with the funky “Big Fun,” featuring the hypnotic vocals of Paris Grey.

House was now officially mainstream. Club MTV, which premiered on the cable music channel on Aug. 31, 1987, took on a looser, EDM-heavy feel. In 1990, Madonna was criticized by some LGBTQ activists for appropriating New York’s Black and Latino ballroom scene for her house hit “Vogue.” The next year, Prince (“Gett Off”) and Michael Jackson (“Remember the Time”) tapped Hurley to produce house remixes for their respective hit singles. Knuckles, who scored his first No. 1 dance single “The Whistle Song” the same year, sprinkled his magic on gospel ensemble Sounds of Blackness’ foot-stomper “The Pressure Pt. 1.”

For veteran music writer and culture critic Craig Seymour, the shift was transformative. “As a Black gay man, it felt like I was being affirmed in every way,” he remembered. “To be able to get in my car, turn on the radio and hear these mainstream artists on house remixes meant everything because that was my music. It lessened all the homophobic voices that were coming from some in the Black community. It no longer mattered what the preacher or politician was saying. All that mattered was my culture was being seen.”

Yet some purists bristled at house music’s new pristine sheen. The easiest targets were Belgium import Technotronic, Italian trio Black Box and American dance hybrid outfit C+C Music Factory. What’s indisputable, though, is that Black women were at the center of house music’s early ’90s commercial takeover. Martha Wash (“Everybody, Everybody”), Waters (“Gypsy Woman,” “Makin’ Happy”), CeCe Peniston (“Finally”) and Robin S. (“Show Me Love”) all racked up top 10 pop singles on the Billboard Hot 100.

By the end of 1993, the history-making run was over. But back in the city where it started, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk is still preaching the gospel of house. The spirit is alive and jacking.

“I’m so proud that this baby we created out of Chicago is still being held, nurtured and fed,” said the crate-digging master who still DJs around the world, was named the King of House Music by his beloved hometown, and owns the naming rights to the House Music Hall of Fame. “One day we may even induct Beyoncé and Drake.”