Be Black, Be Loose.

For the final installment of my sex-blog trilogy I’ve decided to pen a few words about my favourite film with the usual rambling and eventual link to the soundtrack, hopefully qualifying it as relevant to a music blog…

Hi, Mom! is not a porno, though someone sought to market it as one with misleading alternative titles such as Blue Manhattan and Confessions Of A Peeping John, however the John in question is simply trying his luck in the porn industry. Hi, Mom! is in fact a satire, made in 1969 by Brian DePalma as a standalone sequel to his previous Greetings which featured an unknown actor by the name of Bob DeNiro exploring what he dubs ‘peep art’ before getting drafted into the Vietnam war.

Hi, Mom! follows up with John (Bob) returning to NYC trying to pick up the pieces of his post war life. The parallels with Taxi Driver end there as he sells his peep art idea to a porn baron who quickly pulls the plug on the project leaving Bob roaming the streets til he stumbles upon a group of black activists staging an off-Broadway play called Be Black Baby.

Funk & soul fans may have an idea of where I’m going with this as Grady Tate recorded a song called Be Black Baby back in ‘69, sampled by the likes of Main Source and Big Daddy Kane for the spotters amongst you. What you may not know is Tate made the track for Hi, Mom! specifically to accompany various sequences revolving around the militant theatre group as they attempt to spread their Black Power message to the middle class population of Greenwich Village…

A word of warning: the following sequences contain acts of violence which some may find upsetting, if you are of a delicate temperament or you don’t get jokes then I’d advise you go straight to the 4th video and simply listen to the Grady Tate track in full.

Be Black Baby Part 1

Be Black Baby Part 2

Grady Tate “Be Black Baby”