Barry Michael Cooper was a journalist, screenwriter and producer best known for his “Harlem trilogy” of films: “New Jack City,” “Sugar Hill,” and “Above the Rim.”
- Died: January 22, 2025 (Who else died on January 22?)
- Details of death: Died in Baltimore at the age of 66.
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Barry Michael Cooper’s legacy
Before Cooper wrote influential early ‘90s films like “New Jack City,” he was a hard-hitting journalist who probed aspects of city life many mainstream media outlets would not touch. The Harlem-born Cooper’s work for The Village Voice and other publications was among the first to shine a spotlight on the then-new crack epidemic in the 1980s, innovative new music movements that would soon become widely influential, and so much more.
He was among the earliest reporters to treat the rap and hip-hop scene seriously, and he’s credited with coining the term “new jack swing” in the late ‘80s to describe the blend of rap and R&B – a sound that would become one of the era’s most popular in music. Cooper’s reporting excellence, such as his 1986 piece for Spin, titled “Crack, a Tiffany Drug at Woolworth Prices,” peered inside an issue of which most Americans were still unaware.
His work as a journalist brought him to the attention of Quincy Jones (1933–2024), who asked him to do a rewrite of the film that would become “New Jack City.” Co-written by Thomas Lee Wright and directed by Mario Van Peebles, the captivating 1991 crime drama helped make Wesley Snipes a star and proved influential in the years to come. Cooper followed it up with the 1994 releases “Sugar Hill” and “Above the Rim,” which rounded out what has come to be known as his “Harlem trilogy.” The latter was Tupac Shakur’s final movie released during the rapper-actor’s lifetime. The three films combined to explore life in the neighborhood Cooper knew best.
Cooper’s accolades include winning Best Magazine Feature twice in 1987 for his 1986 piece published in Spin, “In Cold Blood: The Baltimore Teen Murders.” His final work was as producer and writer of a 2017 TV adaptation of director Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” which ran for two seasons on Netflix.
On New Jack City:
“It was crazy. The effect it had was like crack. It was an immediate hit. Wesley gave the performance of a lifetime. He took Nino Brown and made him sympathetic and repulsive at the same time. Nino had all of it. In every scene of that movie, Wesley projected that, so he’s a progenitor of that movement — of Puff, of Dame, of Jay-Z, even Cam’ron.” — interview with StopSmiling, 2007
Tributes to Barry Michael Cooper
Full obituary: The Hollywood Reporter
