Melvin Van Peebles

Melvin Van Peebles was a maverick, self-made film producer, writer, artist, and playwright whose independent Blaxploitation films were a landmark of African-American cinema, accompanied by soundtracks that helped pave the way for early rap music. Born in the Southside of Chicago on August 21, 1932, Van Peebles wrote an article about his life working as a cable car driver in San Francisco, which turned into a novel and two homemade short films about his life. French cinephile Francois Langlois took him to work in Paris, where he put his stories to music, delivering spoken word raps over eccentric jazz-funk sounds on the debut album Brer Soul (1969). Its ghetto tales of racial and social disenchantment chimed with the work of Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets, and both Brer Soul and its 1971 follow-up, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, are cited as key inspirations for early hip hop. Returning to the US, his film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was championed by the Black Panther movement and became a huge cult hit that galvanised the black community and inspired movies like Shaft and Superfly. He created his own score to the movie on piano and had Earth, Wind & Fire (who were unknown at the time) record his compositions. After earning multiple Tony Award nominations for his work as the composer of the early-'70s Broadway musicals Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death and Don't Play Us Cheap!, he released As Serious as A Heart Attack and What The...You Mean I Can't Sing?! in 1974. He became a Wall Street trader during the 1980s but returned to music with Ghetto Gothic in 1995, then received the French Legion of Honour in 2001 in recognition of his life's work. He died two decades older on September 22, 2021, at the age of 89, survived by a family that includes his actor son, Mario Van Peebles.

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