About Barry Michael Cooper
Barry Michael Cooper (June 12, 1958 – January 22, 2025) was an American writer, producer, and director, best known for his screenplays for the films New Jack City (1991), Sugar Hill (1994), and Above the Rim (1994), sometimes called his "Harlem Trilogy". == Background == Cooper was born in Harlem, New York, and grew up in Little Washington Heights between 164th and 165th streets on Amsterdam Avenue. He has stated that the neighborhood was very diverse and that he played with Black, Jewish, and White children. When he was ten, his family moved to the Esplanade Gardens, a co-op high rise in Harlem with tenants of various classes and races. Cooper died in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 21 or 22, 2025. == Career == Cooper began his writing career as a music critic for The Village Voice, serving later as an investigative reporter for the New York City alt-weekly from 1980 to 1989. He wrote "Teddy Riley's New Jack Swing: Harlem Gangsters Raise a Genius" for the Voice in 1987 and is credited with naming the then-new hybrid of R&B and rap. That same year, Cooper's article, "Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young", published in the Village Voice, brought him to the attention of Quincy Jones, who hired him to rewrite a screenplay about 1970s Harlem heroin dealer Nicky Barnes. Cooper's screenplay was later produced as the film New Jack City (1991), which he set in Harlem after the arrival of crack cocaine in the 1980s. It was the first film in what has been called Cooper's "Harlem Trilogy", which also includes Sugar Hill and Above the Rim (co-written with Jeff Pollack, the film's director, from a story by Pollack and Benny Medina), both of which were released in 1994.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.