‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’: How Melvin Van Peebles Lit The Blaxploitation Fire

Melvin Van Peebles kick-started the Blaxploitation genre with a gritty movie and a great soundtrack.Let’s be clear from the beginning: Melvin Van Peebles is not a traditional singer. And Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, released in June 1971, two months after the film, is very much a soundtrack album, not a straightforward Stax collection of soulful songs. Kicking off with a bizarre mixture of gospel and sex on “Sweetback Loses His Cherry” (including a snip of “Wade In The Water,” which EWF’s leader, Maurice White, would have played night after night as a drummer with Ramsey Lewis), it rapidly becomes apparent...