Hip-Hop Mourns Dying of Journalist & Screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper

Barry Michael Cooper, the journalist who coined the time period “New Jack Swing” to explain the song Teddy Riley used to be making all through the ’80s and wrote the screenplays for influential motion pictures like New Jack Town that includes Wesley Snipes’ iconic position as Nino Brown, Above the Rim starring 2Pac in one in all his maximum memorable roles as boulevard hustler Birdie, and Sugar Hill (additionally starring Snipes) gave up the ghost Tuesday (Jan. 22).

Nelson George, every other influential hip-hop journalist, broke the scoop on his Substack. “Barry Michael Cooper died lately in Baltimore, consistent with his son Mathew,” he wrote. “It’ll take me a minute to collect all my ideas, however simply sought after to thank him for recommending to Robert Christgau on the Village Voice when I used to be seeking to write for the Riffs segment again in 1981. It used to be a key second in my occupation and lifestyles.”

Including, “Barry helped outline popular culture within the ‘80s and ‘90s along with his early reporting on crack, by way of naming Teddy Riley’s sound ‘new jack swing’, and writing famous person cars for Wesley Snipes (New Jack Town, Sugar Hill) and Tupac (Above the Rim.) Although he lived a lot of the closing a long time of his lifestyles in Baltimore, he used to be Harlem to his core.”

Michael A. Gonzales, who co-wrote the vital Deliver The Noise: A Information to Rap Song and Hip-Hop Tradition with Havelock Nelson, tweeted out the Village Voice article profiling Teddy Riley the place the time period New Jack Swing used to be invented and referred to Cooper as one in all his “major inspirations.”

A&R extraordinaire Dante Ross wrote a long caption on Instagram about how a lot of fan he used to be of his writing and said the affect his film scripts had at the hip-hop style and neighborhood.  “His Harlem trilogy of movies, New Jack Town, Sugar Hill and Above The Rim have been past influential in relation to Hip Hop cinema, they actually modified the sport,” he mentioned.

New Jack Town, Above the Rim, and Sugar Hill proceed to be referenced by way of rappers and meme’d on-line by way of enthusiasts 30 years later.

To this point, no reason for dying has been introduced. He used to be 66 years outdated.