‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ Director Shaka King Breaks Down The Movie’s Killer Soundtrack

Scene: Opening montage of stock footage introducing the leadership and rhetoric of the Black Panther Party.

Shaka King: I must acknowledge an important source, which is NTS Radio, a UK-based station. They have turned me on to so much music over the last seven or so years. I heard this spoken word poem, I believe, on an NTS show called Nonsense. Or maybe it was Paul Camo’s show. Anyway, this comes on, I hear it, and that tone. The words are the words, right? But the performance! It’s the sound of actors who sound like real people. It’s an extinct sound of that era.

It’s like my friend, Tone Tank, he’s in the movie, he plays one of the racist cops. We always talk about his voice; that tonality is dying. He’s a New Yorker in his early 40s, very thick accent.

Decider: Oh, I absolutely remember this guy. He gets one close-up, but it jumps out. “You can thank the Black Panthers!”

Yes, that’s him!

I live in Queens, New York. I still hear that tone.

You hear it with older guys. But when those guys die? Their kids don’t sound like that. It’s gonna be gone. And it’s the same way with those voices in that poem, those voices are of that era. You won’t meet anyone who sounds like that. I love that tone. And, of course, the words? It’s a surprise. That line. “‘Cause dem n*****s ain’t playing,” it’s like that’s the line?!?

So I heard it, Shazamed it, tucked it away. Then I thought “there’s no way Warner Bros. would let me do this” I warned myself not to get too attached to the idea, that it was impossible.

We had a lot of different directions with the opening. At one point there were suggestions to open on J. Edgar Hoover, and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want Hoover to be the ones to introduce the Panthers, I wanted the Panthers to introduce themselves. So we had the idea to use stock footage. As my editor Kristan Sprague and I are putting that together I thought, “uhhhh, let me see what happens if I drop this in here real quick” then “oh, yes, this is how you start this shit!”

My favorite movies, when they start, it’s “we’re in the movie now.” I say this jokingly, but also not-jokingly, that I wanted this to open like X-Men 2, where it’s like “oh, shit, we’re in it!” from the very beginning.

Still, I did not think Warner Bros. would let me use it, honestly.

Scene: First shot of LaKeith Stanfield, moving with urgency through the Chicago streets about to pull off a heist. And then again, at the end of the movie, when his past and his destiny collide on him.

Shaka King: We did our pitch meetings with “The Inflated Tear.” I played it to set the tone. In the film it starts with Rahsaan’s horns, but the song itself begins with these ambient bells, and we’d play that to get people in the zone.

It was crazy that it ended up in the actual movie. I can’t say I always knew it would be in there — I knew that it had to feel like this. But when you see [LaKeith Stanfield] walking in that coat, and it’s flapping behind him? Those horns sound like we’re starting a noir film. Then later on, when the badge comes back, I knew it could be a cool callback. This is what I love about filmmaking: to take music and marry it with imagery. It elevates it, or offers contrast. It’s a great element to play with.

Decider: Hearing it twice, when he has to jump into action, it’s like a stinger. Like the old Batman show stinger.

Exactly.

But because O’Neal is not exactly a hero, it’s sour. It’s a dissonant sound, and O’Neal is a dissonant man. So let me throw a crazy theory your way. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, as you and I know, was an unorthodox performer who blew into many saxophones at once. So the tone we’re hearing is a bifurcated tone, it’s split. O’Neal is a man who is split, he doesn’t know his identity. Eh?

Totally.

I … I don’t know that I ever put it to those words, but that dissonant sound felt like O’Neal. I’d play it to say “this is the guy.” And we wanted to crank that sound, so that it hits you. It bothered some viewers. They felt the dissonance was shrieking, so we actually actually added a contrabass clarinet underneath it to warm it up. It still destabilizes.

The song creeps back in the strings, peppered throughout the film. There are riffs in the same key that Mark Isham put in there, a brilliant move by him. “The Inflated Tear” is the foundation to the score.

Scene: Bar where “The Crowns” hang out, as O’Neal comes in to pull a scam.

King: “I’ve Cried” was something I heard sampled by the producer Knxwledge. Then I heard the original and knew it could be good for one of the bar songs. I didn’t want to pull from the usual references, because I felt like it was lazy. I felt like if we did our job well enough, in terms of creating this world that feels like 1968 and 1969, then we don’t need songs to signify those years. I wanted the feel of that era, the texture, what were real people were really listening to. So I heard the sample, probably on NTS, Shazamed it, found the original, held on to it.

Scene: Same as above, but after a small jump in time.

King: With “Suddenly,” again, looking for bar cues. My music supervisor Zach Cowie was looking, people at Warner Bros. Music were looking. We had a tough time with this placement and had difficulty clearing some of our the dustier picks. So I went YouTube hunting.

I went to playlists of people I trusted, then I hit “Suddenly” and heard that vocal riff and I went “ooh.” Because I needed something to signal a time jump. If you drop it in, no matter where, it segues well. It’s mellow, but a strong entry.

Decider: A$AP Rocky sampled this one, I learned.

I didn’t know that.

But what I love about it is the mellow vibe, then the violence breaks out, for that head-butt.

Yes, and when he bends down, when you first really see him, it’s on this vocal riff.

He gets a matinee idol moment. You know, LaKeith is a handsome man!

He’s a good lookin’ cat!

Scene: O’Neal steals a car, races through Chicago, gets caught.

Decider: This was a deep cut. I never heard of her, she was a two-hit wonder for Motown, and one of the few white artists for Motown at that time.

King: I didn’t know that until you just said it. Zach Cowie sent four or five tracks for each scene I requested and he found this one. The drums are so hard — the classic Motown drums. We wanted that energy, we mixed it loud to elevate everything.

It has the punch of the Aretha Franklin “Baby, I Love You” cue in GoodFellas. Not that Chris Clark is the same as Aretha – no disrespect to her, but come on. Some trivia about Chris Clark, she co-wrote the screenplay to Lady Sings The Blues.

Get out of here!

That’s the bar trivia no one will ever get. What connects Judas and the Black Messiah to Lady Sings The Blues?

Scene: Bold, close-up title cards before we learn how O’Neal was sent in by the FBI to get information on Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party.

King: We had this title with biblical implications. Early on, Craig Harris and I had many conversations about introducing kind of a traditional Black choral element. Like a Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln sound or like Andrew Hill’s “Lift Every Voice,” that kind of sound. So what happens?

The pandemic happens. We can’t put a bunch of vocalists in a room like that. We had to pivot. Zach played me this song and it was “oh my God, this is the title card for sure.” It had the mournful quality, the Black choral tradition, everything.

It’s my favorite game to play, throw a song on and see if it synch to what you have. And if it lands on a dime, you just have to stick with it, it’s a blessing. And it happened a lot with this movie.

Decider: It’s a chilling song, and it’s of a similar world to Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Eddie Gale played with Sun Ra, there’s a lot of commonalities there.

Melodic dissonance, that’s what’s happening.

Scene: Montage including O’Neal getting educated in a classroom setting by Fred Hampton and other leaders of the Black Panther Party.

Decider: I have a theory about this I want to run by you, similar to my “Inflated Tear” theory. You tell me if I am nuts.

King: Okay.

I’m a classic jazz guy so this album, Money Jungle, is a biggie. It was released in 1963 when Duke Ellington is already very much of the old guard. Charles Mingus, on the other hand, younger, more radical musically, and also more militant in his politics. But this album is synergy between them.

Now, in this scene, you have O’Neal, and we don’t really know what his beliefs are. When Hampton is educating him, we’re unsure just how much he’s opening his eyes. But it’s implied that some of it must be getting through. So I see this as a parallel, maybe, of the two narratives. Unless I’m just going overboard.

Yeah, I never, never thought about it like that.

This what happens when you make a movie. It goes to the audience, and they go nuts with it.

Well, that’s why I like to make films with a gap that people fill in. But this track, though, this came from a friend of Jesse Plemons [who plays FBI agent Roy Mitchell], who had made a mix. And Zach and I both listened to it and this was one we both liked.

There were several versions of that montage, but every time it had that song. Montages were made for that song. I’m actually surprised it hasn’t been used in films a ton of times, because it’s a well known jazz album, and it works so well for montages.

Scene: O’Neal convinces the FBI to give him a car, so we see him cruising Chicago in this sweet ride.

Decider: You hear this and you think “oh, this must be Booker T. and the MGs,” who were the great multiracial instrumental R&B band of the era, but they get used in movies all the time. Instead, no, it’s The Outlaw Blues Band, also a multiracial R&B band, but only people who really know their stuff can clock this one.

King: This was on my list from real, real early. I knew the sample from De La Soul. [Note: “Deep Gully” was sampled by De La Soul twice on the album Buhloon Mindstate, on “Intro (Buhloone Mindstate)” and on “Eye Patch.” It was also on “When the Sh*t Goes Down” by Cypress Hill.] I also heard it in a Gaslamp Killer mix. So I had it in my stash and always knew “this is for a driving scene.” This is a song for a dude who is feeling his car.

I have another one like it, but I’m not gonna name it. That’s saved for another driving scene, when you have to introduce a real tough guy.

Scene: Fred Hampton enters the same bar from the beginning, looking to broker a peace with “The Crowns.”

Decider: Here’s my theory. As we’ve laid out, you have gone to great lengths to choose deep-cut songs. But this one, penned by Curtis Mayfield, is a big hit, and many people will know it. In a way, it’s the kind of song you are supposed to hear in a movie like this.

Now, I interpret this as part of a little switch. In this scene, Hampton and the Panthers enter the Crowns’s bar. We kinda expect it to lead to violence. So we hear a “typical” song. Of course, things get subverted, because this story is unusual, and it’s actually the slow beginning of Fred beginning his Rainbow Coalition. So you’ve pulled the rug out from us.

King: Yeah, pretty close, actually. We had discussions that there should be at least one song people knew. So I figured, okay, what’s something that shouts-out Chicago, since we were unable to shoot there. People from Chicago are going watch this and know it isn’t Chicago, so I had to give something to them. So I thought: Curtis [Mayfield].

Well, what Curtis song? Well, I remembered someone I interviewed a long time ago for a documentary. He told me how the drug dealers in his neighborhood all listened to Freddie Jackson and all this sweet music. It stuck with me. I wanted to have this bar scene with tough guys listening to a sweet and happy Curtis Mayfield song.

Think about Italian tough guy mobsters, right? They listen to Sinatra mooning over lost love.

Yeah, plus it fits what Fred is doing. He comes in with an upbeat attitude. “I’m here, let’s do it.” He claps a guy on the back who gives him a dirty look. He has that energy and confidence. There’s a lot of bliss in the performance and the song.

Scene: A moment of lovey-dovey between Fred Hampton and Deborah Johnson (Akua Njeri).

King: This was something that didn’t quite sound like anything else in the movie, it sounds like a film score. Some hear this and think it is part of the original score.

It’s a nice transition moment, leaving Panther headquarters, then being with Fred and Deborah, a feeling of love. You’ve got the strings that come in over the dissolve. I love the fun game of lining up music and imagery.

Scene: Montage beginning with Fred Hampton making peace with white and Latino groups, intercut with an FBI dinner scene, and a protest.

King: Back to Eddie Gale. I was not too familiar with him or this album [1968’s Ghetto Music] but Zach sent me those two songs. As I mentioned earlier we were looking for the Black choral tradition, but Max Roach was too heavy, with the horns and those drums.

We had other versions of this montage. “Absolutions” by Max Roach and “Lions of Juda” by Steve Reid. But we started in with “The Rain” with the guitar over the funeral and let it play out. Then we added some sound design. So those boots you hear are a kind of counterpoint. It took finessing.

Scene: O’Neal, drowning his sorrows in a bar, is approached by an undercover FBI (Lil Rel Howery) and is told he must betray Fred Hampton, and slip narcotics in his drink.

King: One of my favorite rapper-producers is Brownsville Ka. If you don’t know him, get familiar with him immediately. He has an album called Days With Dr. Yen Lo that he produced with Preservation that is a desert island classic for me. The minute we’re done talking, get out that record. I’m serious.

They included the sample of “Sippin’ A Cup Of Coffee” on the song “Day 13,” one of my favorites on there. Absolutely captivating. Then one day I hear the original, I’m sure on NTS. Grabbed it. Then we threw it in there to see if it worked and I loved it.

But the studio was like “we can’t track this down.” They told us that we’d have to move on. But Zack Cowie got all his contacts on the search. One of his friends discovered that it was actually Questlove’s father [Lee Andrews] who wrote the song.

Now, Quelle Chris, who composed additional music with Chris Keys for Mark Isham and Craig Harris, his wife Jean Grae is in contact with Questlove. So once we connect it’s like “oh, no problem.” In fact, he was looking for a reason to get more into figuring out rights for his estate, so this got him motivated.

It’s one of my favorite songs in the movie.

Decider: We’re running out of time, so we have to skip a few [sorry, Horace Parlan, I still love you], but we must discuss the Judas and the Black Messiah “inspired by” soundtrack. Lots of big names are on here [Jay-Z, Nipsey Hussle, H.E.R., Nas, Black Thought, A$AP Rocky]. So, you slipped these people an early cut and said “go”?

King: I was not very involved. I would hear pieces as they would come in. It was [RCA Records exec] Archie Davis and [Judas producer] Ryan Coogler who put that together.

Ryan, you know, he’s a genius. As a filmmaker and a businessperson. I don’t know how old he is precisely, but he’s of the age when soundtracks from the 1990s would be used to promote movies, and movies would promote soundtracks. He did  this with Black Panther and he had the idea to do the same thing here.

It’s great because it is getting people interested in the movie who might not otherwise have stumbled upon it.

Where to watch Judas and the Black Messiah