Barry Michael Cooper (1959-2025): Fresh Is The Word

 

Barry Michael Cooper....

You may not know his name but you know his (pen) game. Pages torn from memories of his mind would spawn Nineties classics "New Jack City" (1991) "Sugar Hill" (1994) and "Above The Rim" (1994). Cooper was the creative force behind this Harlem film trilogy penning their screenplays inspired by his time of coming up in New York in the 1970s. 

 Years before Hollywood came calling, Cooper sealed his legend penning articles in the Village Voice and Spin Magazine. 

Cooper hit my radar during his prolific period (for me anyway)between 1988-1990 thanks to joints like his May 1989 dope Big Daddy Kane piece  ("Raw Like Sushi"):

"Big Daddy Kane is a cool head on a dangerous body. He's the greatest rapper of all time---maybe. He is what he is and that's what scares people."

He'd already written a few potent narratives I would read later. 

Cooper's February 1986 Spin piece "Crack" transported readers to world defying class and circumstance: teenaged high school dropouts on the corner and suburban kids from Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut descending into NYC shared an unlikely kinship grounded in addiction that brought them all to same place: Harlem's 145th Street drug bazaar.

"In Cold Blood" a May 1986 chilling Spin article about Baltimore's drug woes was a proper precursor to the beloved HBO series arriving two decades later.  Not long after a Cooper's Village Voice narrative heralded the arrival of a young music prodigy barely out of his teens banging out music  like a one-man hit factory. Cooper even coined a name of this kind of brand of R&B akin to "watching P-Funk. Kraftwerk, Weather Report, The New York Philharmonic and Blue Magic blur." He branded it new jack swing. 

My favorites were the ones where he shared memories of his beloved teenaged/young adult Harlem World----a universe where one could spend the morning  at the Schomburg Library  hit the Rucker for afternoon ball games and then head to the Apollo  Theater to catch Blue Magic---all in one day. Even more thrilling were his tales of his hazy shade of angel dust days being crazy zooted during a time for before crack. 

These stories would find their way into his screenplays.  Cooper would do it with flavor too. 70s heroin king Nicky Barnes morphed into ruthless 80's crack dealer Nino Brown whose own name was inspired from a a now defunct downtown shoe store ("Nino Gabriele") where Cooper splurged for a suede kiltie kicks with his summer job checks. 

Cooper---among with a select few of others inspired me to become a writer. At 20, I shook off the rust of literary promise exhibited as six-year old penning short stories back in 1974. Fifteen years later I wrote a music piece in college following a series of uninspired essays of mandated boring topics---it was dismissed by my professor as plagiarism because it was too good. When I shared this story with future college professors praising my current written works, they were in shock.

Nearly forty years later I received my consolation: Cooper commended my deep journalistic research skills for my piece on my 2015 piece on New Jack Swing trio Guy ("Groove Trendsetters Introduce New Sounds and Uptown Style to R&B Music"). A year later he proclaimed my  Common album review as one of the 2016's bests. 

Starting in the early 2000s we'd exchange New Year's salutations via email. In the blog era and later social media I congratulated him on his posts, purchased his work and checked in occasionally. Unfortunately, in 2020---a post of solidarity pointing out recent karmic career woes of actor John Boyega----famously touted the superiority of Black Brit actors over Black American actors. Boyega had previously criticized Cooper's written episode exploring the issue in the Spike Lee reboot of "She's Gotta Have It."  

That Twitter DM was ill-timed: Cooper was mourning the death of his son and he blocked me. He accepted my e-mail apology message but we never communicated again.  

In this IG culture and X-rated era (Twitter RIP), I lament the public lack of appreciation(and their short attention spans) for the written word and dwindling literary genius displaced by gossip sites and podcast shock and awe.

Barry Michael Cooper's  (or "BMC" as I called him) work was before its time and of it. The fragile brotherhood between young Harlem drug kingpins Mitch, Ace and Rico captured in 2002's "Paid In Full" without  Nino and Gee Money ("New Jack City"), Tommy and Birdie Sheppard or Raynathan and Roemello Scuggs ("Sugar Hill"). 

Cooper's cinematic mastery of film noir and Greek tragedy lives on in the well-traveled meme of "Paid In Full's" Mitch's somber reflection of the seductive drug game holding him captive similar to his grip on his crack-ravaged customers. 

As Mitch momentarily ponders a life ("you know a nigga got dough, a nigga can leave the league" ) without the cash, cars, jewels and adulations ("I get love out in here in Harlem") he delivers a line that immortalized the best scene that Cooper never wrote:

"You know If I leave the league, (will) the fans still gon' love me man?"

Powerful and prolific, Barry Michael Cooper will forever remain---in the words of Big Daddy Kane: Like a hieroglyphic.