Do the Right Thing: Celebration Continued Part II ---> The Music Part I

It's a twitter music monday yall. Catch my tunes.

Today's extra hot. I was in the emergency room and saw too many heatstroked seniors. Guess that means its time for another installment about Do the Right Thing, set on the hottest day of the year.

Now any die hard Spike Lee fan will tell you about Joe's Bedstuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, Spike Lee's 1983 thesis and how that launched Spike's career and yada yada yada. That's your Spike Lee fact for the day. Instead I'm going to focus on Spike and music.

The same year Lee was filming his thesis, hiphop was still in its infant stage and rap was forming a personality of sorts. In 1983, Grandmaster Melle Mel (and possibly Grandmaster Flash..there's some sketchiness with the credits) came out with White Lines. The unofficial music video starred Laurence Fishburne and was directed by none other than Spike Lee.

Grandmaster Flash White Lines
Uploaded by papafonk - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Immersed in the politics of the day and all the characteristics of hip hop culture: innovation, rebellion, political dissatisfaction and the excited emergence of a new voice for an underclass, Lee merged his art with hip hop music and Do the Right Thing earned its place in hip hop history.

From directing the Public Enemy video which served as the movie's theme:


to the opening sequence:


to the costuming, language, and of course Radio Raheem and that big ol music box blasting hip hop


Lee incorporated hip hop into his work in a manner that had not been done before, epitomizing it as a form of black expression and often contrasting and comparing it to jazz sensibilities with its own culture of innovation, signifying and protesting.

Do the Right Thing isn't the only movie in which Spike has used the dynamics of music to emphasize his point, but the movie and its writer-director have left a clear mark in the hip hop community inspiring pieces such as
UNI-K.R.E.A.M.


and whatever Jermaine Dupri, Ciara and Nelly cooked up for this.

Nelly ft Jermaine Dupri & Ciara - Stepped On My J's (New)
by foxysoul

Following my Do the Right Thing Tribute?
Part One: Scary Do the Right Thing Muppets