Hip-Hop Mourns Death of Journalist & Screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper

Barry Michael Cooper, the journalist who coined the term “New Jack Swing” to describe the music Teddy Riley was making during the ’80s and wrote the screenplays for influential movies like New Jack City featuring Wesley Snipes’ iconic role as Nino Brown, Above the Rim starring 2Pac in one of his most memorable roles as street hustler Birdie, and Sugar Hill (also starring Snipes) passed away Tuesday (Jan. 22).

Nelson George, another influential hip-hop journalist, broke the news on his Substack. “Barry Michael Cooper died today in Baltimore, according to his son Mathew,” he wrote. “It’ll take me a minute to gather all my thoughts, but just wanted to thank him for recommending to Robert Christgau at the Village Voice when I was trying to write for the Riffs section back in 1981. It was a key moment in my career and life.”

Adding, “Barry helped define pop culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s with his early reporting on crack, by naming Teddy Riley’s sound ‘new jack swing’, and writing star vehicles for Wesley Snipes (New Jack City, Sugar Hill) and Tupac (Above the Rim.) Though he lived much of the last decades of his life in Baltimore, he was Harlem to his core.”

Michael A. Gonzales, who co-wrote the important Bring The Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture with Havelock Nelson, tweeted out the Village Voice article profiling Teddy Riley where the term New Jack Swing was invented and referred to Cooper as one of his “main inspirations.”

A&R extraordinaire Dante Ross wrote a lengthy caption on Instagram about how much of fan he was of his writing and acknowledged the influence his movie scripts had on the hip-hop genre and community.  “His Harlem trilogy of flicks, New Jack City, Sugar Hill and Above The Rim were beyond influential in terms of Hip Hop cinema, they literally changed the game,” he said.

New Jack City, Above the Rim, and Sugar Hill continue to be referenced by rappers and meme’d online by fans 30 years later.

So far, no cause of death has been announced. He was 66 years old.