On October 11, 2002, Brown Sugar hit theaters and gave hip hop heads something rare: a romantic comedy where the culture wasn’t a backdrop. It was the whole point.
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa and written with Michael Elliot, the film starred Taye Diggs as Dre Ellis, a record label A&R, and Sanaa Lathan as Sidney Shaw, his childhood friend who becomes editor-in-chief of XXL. The two bonded over hip hop as kids, and the whole movie runs on one question: when did you fall in love with hip hop?
What It Was About
Dre is fed up with the industry’s watered-down product, so he quits his label to start one focused on authentic hip hop and signs Cavi, an MC played by Mos Def. Meanwhile, Dre marries Reese (Nicole Ari Parker), Sidney starts dating Kelby (Boris Kodjoe), and the friendship everybody else can see is more than a friendship keeps getting harder to ignore. Queen Latifah and Wendell Pierce round out a strong cast. It ends right where it started, with Cavi’s song playing in the park where Dre and Sidney first fell for the music.
The Cameos Alone Are a History Lesson
The cameo list is a who’s who: Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Pete Rock, De La Soul, Black Thought, Common, Method Man, Talib Kweli, Slick Rick, Dana Dane, Doug E. Fresh, Questlove, Jermaine Dupri, Russell Simmons, Fabolous, Beanie Sigel, Angie Martinez and more, according to Wikipedia.
The Soundtrack and the Numbers
The soundtrack, released September 24, 2002 on MCA, peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 and No. 2 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Its lead single, Erykah Badu and Common’s “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop),” spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, reached No. 9 on the Hot 100 and won the Grammy for Best R&B Song, per Wikipedia. The song tells the same story as the movie, with hip hop written as a lover.
At the box office, the film made about $28.3 million worldwide on an $8 million budget. Audiences gave it an “A” CinemaScore, and Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars. It also earned NAACP Image Award nominations, including Outstanding Motion Picture and acting nods for Diggs, Lathan and Mos Def.
The IAHHM Take: Why It Still Hits
Brown Sugar came out at a turning point, when the money in rap was getting huge and a lot of fans worried the music was losing its soul. The film took that worry and made it romantic. Twenty-four years later, the “real hip hop vs. the industry” argument is still going, and Sidney and Dre are still the couple people point to.
Also on October 11: In 2005, DANGERDOOM (MF DOOM and Danger Mouse) released The Mouse and the Mask in the U.S., built around Adult Swim characters. It reached No. 41 on the Billboard 200, per Wikipedia.
So when did you fall in love with hip hop? Tell us in the comments, and dig into more throwbacks in our Classics section.
Sources: Wikipedia: Brown Sugar (2002 film), Wikipedia: Love of My Life, Wikipedia: The Mouse and the Mask
