Charles Quinton Murphy was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He was best known as a writer and cast member of the Comedy Central sketch-comedy series Chappelle's Show as well as the co-star of the sitcom Black Jesus. He was the older brother of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy.
The Mack is a 1973 American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by California native Michael Campus and starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor. The film also stars Oscar-nominee Juanita Moore and Tony-nominated actor Dick Anthony Williams. Filmed in Oakland, California, the movie follows the rise and fall of Goldie, who returns from a five-year prison sentence to find that his brother is involved in Black nationalism. Goldie decides to take an alternative path, striving to become the city's biggest pimp.
Rudolph Frank Moore, known as Rudy Ray Moore, was an American comedian, singer, actor, and film producer. He created the character Dolemite, the pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite and its sequels, The Human Tornado and The Dolemite Explosion. The persona was developed during his early comedy records. The recordings often featured Moore delivering profanity-filled rhyming poetry, which later earned Moore the nickname "the Godfather of Rap." Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy portrayed Moore in the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name.
Big Money Hustlas is a 2000 American comedy film directed by John Cafiero as his feature film debut. The film, a homage to exploitation films of the 1970s, focuses on a streetwise San Francisco detective who tries to take down a New York City crime lord. It stars Insane Clown Posse's Joseph "Violent J" Bruce and Joseph "Shaggy 2 Dope" Utsler, and Twiztid's Jamie Madrox and Monoxide Child, and features appearances by Harland Williams, Johnny Brennan, Rudy Ray Moore, Mick Foley and the Misfits. Released direct-to-video, the film debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top Music Videos chart, and was later certified platinum by the RIAA. A Western genre follow-up, Big Money Rustlas, was released direct-to-video on August 17, 2010. In 2015, Insane Clown Posse announced the production of a sequel entitled Big Money Thrusters.
Hy Pyke was an American character actor.
Craig Houston Brewer is an American filmmaker. His 2005 movie Hustle & Flow won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and achieved commercial success, along with an Academy Award for Best Original Song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp". He is also known for directing the 2011 remake of Footloose, the 2019 film Dolemite Is My Name and the 2021 film Coming 2 America, the latter two films starring Academy Award nominee Eddie Murphy.
Coonskin is a 1975 American live-action/animated satirical crime film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film references the Uncle Remus folk tales, and satirizes the blaxploitation film genre as well as Disney's film Song of the South, adapted from the Uncle Remus folk tales. The film's narrative concerns three anthropomorphic Uncle Remus characters, Br'er Rabbit, referred to as Brother Rabbit, Br'er Fox, referred to as Preacher Fox, and Br'er Bear, referred to as Brother Bear. They rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists, and the Mafia, in a satire of both racism within the Hollywood film system, and America itself. The film stars Philip Thomas, Charles Gordone, Barry White, and Scatman Crothers, all of whom appear in both live-action and animated sequences.
Willie Dynamite is a 1973 American blaxploitation film directed by Gilbert Moses and starring Roscoe Orman, Diana Sands, Thalmus Rasulala, Joyce Walker, and was released by Universal Pictures. The eponymous Willie Dynamite is a pimp in New York City, who strives to be number one in the city. As he is trying to do so, a social worker named Cora, is trying to change his ways - as well as those of the women who work for him - for the better. It was the first film produced by the Zanuck-Brown Company.
The Human Tornado is a 1976 American blaxploitation film directed by Cliff Roquemore. The film is a sequel to Dolemite.
"Doggy Dogg World" is the third and final single from American rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg's debut album, Doggystyle (1993). It is the first European-only release with an American video TV-play. It features 1970s-era classic R&B and soul group The Dramatics, with guest rap verses from Kurupt and Daz Dillinger.
D'Urville Martin was an American actor in both film and television. He appeared in numerous 1970s movies in the blaxploitation genre. He also appeared in two unaired pilots of what would become All in the Family as Lionel Jefferson. Born in New York City, Martin began his career in the mid-1960s and soon appeared in prominent films such as Black Like Me, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Rosemary's Baby. Martin also directed films in his career, including Dolemite, starring Rudy Ray Moore.
Black Shampoo is an American exploitation film directed by Greydon Clark. Released in 1976, the comedy film is considered an example of the blaxploitation and sexploitation subgenres of exploitation film. Produced on a budget of $50,000, the film stars John Daniels as Jonathan Knight, an African American businessman and hairdresser who frequently has sex with his predominantly white female clients, and Tanya Boyd as Brenda, Jonathan's secretary and girlfriend, who was previously in a relationship with a white mob boss, who, out of jealousy towards his ex's new lover, begins to regularly send goons to trash Jonathan's hair salon. The violence escalates as the film progresses.
Shaolin Dolemite is a 1999 direct-to-video film starring Rudy Ray Moore and in name, a sequel to Dolemite (1975).
In US cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the Black civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panther Party, political and sociological circumstances that facilitated Black artists reclaiming their power of the Representation of the Black ethnic identity in the arts. The term blaxploitation is a portmanteau of the words Black and exploitation, coined by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood branch of the NAACP in 1972. In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the blaxploitation genre was "proliferating offenses" to and against the Black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminality.
Black Dynamite is a 2009 American blaxploitation action comedy film starring Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson, and Salli Richardson. The film was directed by Scott Sanders and co-written by White, Sanders, and Byron Minns, who also co-stars.
Petey Wheatstraw is a 1977 American blaxploitation comedy film written and directed by Cliff Roquemore, and starring comedian Rudy Ray Moore alongside Jimmy Lynch, Leroy Daniels, Ernest Mayhand, Ebony Wright, and Wildman Steve Gallon. It is typical of Moore's other films from the same era, such as Dolemite and The Human Tornado.
Xenon Pictures is an American film production and distribution company which releases titles produced by African-American filmmakers for African-American audiences. The label has distribution deals with numerous prominent filmmakers, such as Melvin Van Peebles, Rudy Ray Moore, Jamaa Fanaka, Ralph Bakshi and Perry Henzell.
"Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get" is a 1971 single written and produced by Tony Hester and performed by The Dramatics. The rhythm charts, strings and horns were arranged by Johnny Allen. The tracks were recorded at United Sound Recording Studio in Detroit, Michigan.
Dolemite Is My Name is a 2019 American biographical comedy film directed by Craig Brewer and written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. The film stars Eddie Murphy as filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore, who is best known for having portrayed the character of Dolemite in both his stand-up routine and a series of blaxploitation films, which started with Dolemite in 1975.
