"Little Child Runnin' Wild" sets the tone of the whole record - episodic, tragic, hungry and telling tales of psychic misery. The more conservative "Freddie's Dead," which deals with the demise of a sad fat stooge, was doled out instead to a faunching public and is now at the top of everyone's Hot Hundred. The implications are so heavy that this truly amazing song, with its metallic percussion and hypnotic, drugged tone, couldn't possibly be released as a single. "Pusherman," the major vocal theme of the film, identifying the protagonist ("a man of odd circumstance, a victim of ghetto demands"), is almost scary and perverse, given Curtis' manner: He kisses the word "pusherman" rather than sings it. The Mayfield-Pate team dipped into three distinct musical satchels to pull out this lovely and energetic song cycle - the established Shaft system of dramatic, heaving chords and souped-up, insectine guitar and synthesizer chops by Isaac Hayes the lyrical power of the song style and orchestration of Marvin Gaye and David Van dePitte and, certainly not least, the amazing emotive skill of Curtis Mayfield, whose technique is honed and carried to strange extremes. Superfly is not only a superior, imaginative soundtrack, but fine funky music as well and the best of Curtis Mayfield's four albums made since he left the Impressions since the "Gypsy Woman" days. Yet the implied "plot" in Curtis Mayfield's music and lyrics closely follows the line of the film each song is readily identifiable with various scenes the many attitudes and poses that Curtis adopts in his music, whether it be the tough-yet-sensitive persona or a sort of narrative third person, all point to rejection of dope control and self-liberation, the most positive themes of what will be a heavily influential film.īut the greatest quality of any soundtrack is that it can stand alone. The only way that black political consciousness is treated is to make it seem impotent and trivial.
Superfly, the film, glamorizes machismo-cocaine consciousness while making a political moralization about the process that keeps drugs illegal yet sees that they are supplied in quantity to the ghetto.
In fact the anti-drug message on the record is far stronger and more definite than in the film, which was diluted by schizoid cross purposes. This soundtrack to the flash and clever Superfly is as pleasing and pretty in your living room as it is mingled with the images that it aurally represents.