Super Fly  by Curtis Mayfield

Curtis Mayfield released his third studio album titled Super Fly in 1972, an album filled with psychedelic soul, funk, and generally a deeply dark atmosphere. Essentially, the songs of Super Fly were written to sonically accompany the film of the same name by director Gordon Roger Parks Jr., who needed a soundtrack for the movie he was preparing, which was about the happenings in New York and its dark neighborhoods, where prostitution, drugs, and corruption reigned. Mainly, it was an effort to highlight the social situation in the ghettos of big cities. It is the album that encapsulates a city in a very specific era.

The Super Fly album became musically identified with the film, not to say that it exceeded it in success and is now seen as more significant than it. The success was such that Curtis Mayfield received other offers to write film music.

Super Fly has sold 1,500,000 copies in the U.S. alone. It was the album that provided the personal career the artist Mayfield was seeking after The Impressions.