The Mack is a 1973 American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by California native Michael Campus, 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 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 starring Academy Award-nominee Eddie Murphy.
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.
Joshua Tree is a 1993 American action film directed by Vic Armstrong, written by Steven Pressfield and starring Dolph Lundgren, Kristian Alfonso, and George Segal. Much of the film was filmed in Los Angeles, Lone Pine, Agua Dulce, and Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. The climax was shot in the Cottonwood Canyon region of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Hammer is a 1972 blaxploitation film directed by Bruce D. Clark. The film was released following the successes of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft, notable 1971 films that popularized black cinema. It starred Fred Williamson as B.J. Hammer. Williamson went on to become a staple of the genre.
Shaolin Dolemite is a 1999 direct-to-video film starring Rudy Ray Moore and in name, a sequel to Dolemite (1975).
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, after the demand of the Black Panthers for black artists to reclaim the power and rights to their image from the UCLA, and the new rating system within Hollywood allowed up and coming black film makers and actors to create black films for black audiences. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
The signifying monkey is a character of African-American folklore that derives from the trickster figure of Yoruba mythology, Esu Elegbara. This character was transported with Africans to the Americas under the names of Exu, Echu-Elegua, Papa Legba, and Papa Le Bas. Esu and his variants all serve as messengers who mediated between the gods and men by means of tricks. The signifying monkey is "distinctly Afro-American" but is thought to derive from Yoruban mythology, which depicts Echu-Elegua with a monkey at his side.
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.
The Monkey Hustle is a 1976 American blaxploitation film written by Odie Hawkins and Charles Eric Johnson. It stars Yaphet Kotto as Chicago con-man and "hustler" Daddy Foxx and Kirk Calloway as his teenage apprentice. Co-stars include Thomas Carter, Rudy Ray Moore, and Rosalind Cash.
"Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get" is a 1971 single written and produced by Tony Hester and performed by The Dramatics.
Blaxploitation horror films are a genre of horror films involving mostly black actors. In 1972 director William Crain did the first blaxploitation horror film, Blacula.
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.
William Clifford Brown, who went by the name Big Brown, was a mid-twentieth century American street poet, performer, and recording artist. Prominent among the Beats in New York City from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, his distinctive language and style influenced a number of artists and musicians, including Bob Dylan, who declared Brown's to be the best poetry he had ever heard. Brown also influenced the later genres of hip hop and rap. In 1973, after moving to California, he recorded an album, The First Man of Poetry, Big Brown: Between Heaven and Hell, produced by Rudy Ray Moore. Brown was murdered in Los Angeles seven years later.
