Barry Michael Cooper, who penned the “Harlem Trilogy” of “New Jack City,” “Sugar Hill,” and “Above The Rim,” died in his Baltimore home at 66 last Wednesday. No cause of death was given. Cooper aspired to be a writer in high school. Nurtured by fertile art, music, and political activism that were staples of postwar Harlem and New York in general, he became a voracious reader who was encouraged by a series of English teachers and other mentors who motivated him to step out of his comfort zone.
Initially a reporter and culture critic, the native-born Harlemite was instrumental in documenting the appearance of a new hybrid of dance-pop, R&B, and rap that rose within the club culture of New York City. The fusion of these styles by musical forces like Babyface, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and especially Teddy Riley dominated the Billboard charts and dance floors as the genre worked its way into the soundtracks of motion pictures and prime time television.
In 1986 he made a splash in journalism with an article in Spin Magazine titled “Crack, a Tiffany Drug at Woolworth Prices,” exposing the horrors of a cheap intoxicant emerging from the streets of New York City. The next year, his article “Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young” appeared in the Village Voice. It related the spread of an insidious variant of cocaine that was saturating Detroit and other segments of inner-city America, accompanied by a violent subculture.
The narrative showcased a consortium of teenaged entrepreneurs who initially established themselves in heroin trafficking before embracing the new narcotic called crack. Known as Young Boys Incorporated (Y.B.I.), they sprang up from their northwest Detroit roots to set up franchises in Boston and elsewhere. Their business model and modus operandi served as a template for the Black Mafia Family and similar drug gangs across the country throughout the 1980s and 90s into the new millennium.
This seminal article came to the attention of entertainment impresario Quincy Jones, and Cooper was tabbed to rewrite a work in progress on the life of drug kingpin Nicky Barnes.
Cooper’s sweeping changes included updating the narcotic center from heroin to crack, resulting in “New Jack City,” a 1991 box office bonanza, setting the stage for an era of gritty, urban-based Black cinema.
The dope as corrupter of society theme was carried over to 1994’s “Sugar Hill,” and in the same year “Above The Rim,” another narcotics drama set within the turbulent world of New York’s basketball culture. Cooper remained active as a storyteller after his “Harlem Trilogy,” in print and for the screen. In the last decades of his life, he exercised his literary muscles from residence in Baltimore, Md., but remained a Harlemite to his core until the very end.