He Got Game (soundtrack)

Background

He Got Game served as the soundtrack to Spike Lee's 1998 basketball drama of the same name. A film score of the same name, featuring music composed by Aaron Copland, was also released on April 21.

After a four-year hiatus by the group, Professor Griff and The Bomb Squad reunited with Public Enemy for the album, which features political, sports-derived imagery by Chuck D. According to critic Armond White, He Got Game uses basketball as a metaphor for "the essence of black male aspiration. Disproving the film's suggestion of b-ball as an easy passport out of the ghetto, [Public Enemy] challenge trite assumptions about black luck and skill". The album's production features backup female vocals, church-like chorales, austere beats, strings, and funk samples. The title track overtly interpolates Buffalo Springfield's 1966 song "For What It's Worth" and its vocalist Stephen Stills. It was released as He Got Game's only single in May 1998.

Commercial performance

He Got Game debuted at number 26 on the US Billboard 200 chart on May 11, 1998, and sold 46,282 copies in its first week. Despite hip hop music's increased commercial viability at the time, the album had fallen out of the top 100 by July. In an article for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Hilburn opined that its "relatively lackluster showing" with consumers was due to Public Enemy's image and lyrical content rather than the album's quality:

Rap audiences tend to be young and want their own heroes. For all its respect, PE is associated with another era in rap. The music, too, may be too restrained for the thug-life tone favored by today's mass rap audience.

In the United Kingdom, He Got Game peaked at number 50 on the UK Albums Chart, while the title track reached number 16 on the singles chart; it did not chart on the US Hot 100.

Critical reception

He Got Game was well received by music critics. In his review for Rolling Stone magazine, Scott Poulson-Bryant called the album "dense and eclectic, brilliant at moments but sometimes confusing," and found Chuck D to be "inspired again, coming up with blues poetry for the hoops age." Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club felt that, despite occasionally uninformed "lyrical snippets", most of the album has "the sense of urgency and menace that characterized PE's best work ... and the reformed Bomb Squad's sound has expanded in some interesting directions."

In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim DeRogatis called He Got Game "as hard-hitting as anything PE has done" and said that the group "nods to current tastes with more melodic hooks and less white noise than it has offered in the past." Music critic Robert Christgau credited Chuck D for realizing "the soundtrack concept" and viewed that, although only the Danny Saber and Jack Dangers-produced "Go Cat Go" resembles "the stressful speed of classic PE", the hooks are appropriated "subtly" and "brilliantly". Christgau named it the eighth best album of the year in his list for The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll.

Personnel

Credits for He Got Game adapted from Allmusic.