Social historians argue that “the prodigy…is the individual in hyperbolic form” (Heller et al, p. The idea of the child prodigy speaks powerfully to how we have come to think of and experience personhood in the modern West: as singular individuals who possess unique personalities-inner cores of feeling-that are expressed through social performances of word, act and gesture. Many cultures have had an interest in the figure of the exceptionally precocious child, typically linked to religious and/or mythological narratives of portentous destiny, but it has become a pet obsession of modern Western cultures, largely because it is seen to both reflect and guarantee modern conceptions of expressive individualism. In many ways, the very idea of the “ child prodigy” is something of a fictional construct. So many stories abound about her preternaturally wide range as a child, variously rumoured to be anywhere from between three to five octaves, her high dog-summoning whistle register, her fully formed adult larynx, and her uncanny powers of perfect pitch, that it becomes difficult to sort fact from fiction. The Poetic Justice soundtrack is an intermingling of hip-hop (Mista Grimm, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Naughty By Nature, Dogg Pound, Nice & Smooth) and R&B (TLC, Babyface, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Terri & Monica, Cultural Revolution, Stevie Wonder and the first-ever appearance of Usher – then going by Usher Raymond), with Pac contributing “Definition of A Thug N_ga.Julie’s status as a juvenile prodigy, possessed from a young age of a freakishly developed soprano voice, is an integral element of her star mythology and a crucial aspect to the aura of virtuosic exceptionalism highlighted in our last post. This time Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur star as an unlikely couple who fall in love over the course of a road trip after finding commonalities in their painful family situations. John Singleton followed his cinematic debut with Poetic Justice in 1993, which, like Boyz N The Hood, sees renowned musicians cast in key roles. Perhaps the most historically significant track on the soundtrack, however, is “Too Young” by Hi-Five, featuring a teenaged MC named Prodigy, who would soon make a name for himself as one half of the Queensbridge duo Mobb Deep. The soundtrack version is a remix of the original, which had appeared on their groundbreaking debut album, Breaking Atoms.
New Yorkers Main Source’s “Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball” uses America’s pastime as a metaphor for police brutality to great effect.
However, a handful of East Coasters thrown into the mix. “Whenever I’m trying to do something that is endemic of a certain environment, I have to use that music from that environment,” Singleton revealed, with regard to the Boyz N The Hood soundtrack’s heavy reliance on LA-based hip-hop.
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