Today is the 20th anniversary of a movie soundtrack that made heads ring and tell your lady that you want to get next to her, all on a Friday.
Released twenty years ago today (April 11, 1995), the soundtrack to Friday is exemplary of the musical consciousness emanating from many inner cities in America at the time. Equal parts R&B, funk, and Hip-Hop, the soundtrack went double-platinum, besting soundtracks to other popular films featuring Black lead actors, like Bad Boys and Dead Presidents. As a film, Friday served as a comedic antidote to sobering movies like 1991s Boyz N the Hood and 1993s Menace II Society, but similar to those soundtracks, Fridays painted an all-inclusive picture of life in the hood, addressing the good and the bad.
The films opening track serves as a thematic signpost, suggesting that despite the films levity and comedic subject matter, life in the hood still comes with its very real set of dangers. The Isley Brothers Trying To See Another Day provides the sonic backdrop for the films first sequences, which include a robbery, police sirens, weed smoking, and plenty of 40 ounces things symbolic of many days in South Central Los Angeles. Tracks like Mary Jane by Rick James and Roll It Up, Light It Up, Smoke It Up by Cypress Hill contribute to the films legacy as a stoner classic. The lyrics to both present cannabis as a mood elevator and form of escape from the stressful surroundings of the films characters (and when Im feeling low, she comes as no surprise/ Gimme that fat bag of weed and the brew so I can get faded, elevated).
Read the full story from our friends at Ambrosia For Heads.
