A host of family, friends, celebrities, and dignitaries including Ice Cube, Tarij P. Henson, Stevie Wonder gathered to celebrate the life of director John Singleton.
Others who were present to pay their last respects to the fallen director were Black Panther director Ryan Coogler and the film’s Academy Award-winning costume designer Ruth Carter, Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray, football Hall of Famer Jim Brown, rapper Ludacris, and actors Ving Rhames, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, and Tyrese.
The private service was held at Angelus Funeral Home in South Los Angeles, the neighborhood formerly known as South Central, where Singleton spent part of his childhood and where his career-defining film, Boyz N the Hood, was set.
The service came just a week after Singleton’s family announced that he had died at age 51, days after he suffered a stroke and being in a coma. A family statement said Singleton was taken off life support on March 29 and died, though a death certificate issued Monday lists the date of his death as March 28.
John Daniel Singleton burst on the scene as a 24-year old film director, screenwriter, and producer when he debuted with his classic film detailing like in South Central Boyz n the Hood in 1991. For the film, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming the first African American and youngest person to have ever been nominated for that award. Singleton frequently centered his native South Los Angeles in much of his filmography such as Poetic Justice (1993), Higher Learning (1995), and Baby Boy (2001). He also directed the drama Rosewood (1997) and the action films Shaft (2000), 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), and Four Brothers (2005). At the time of his death, he was working on the latest season of Snowfall on FX.
A Singleton representative said his family is also planning a public memorial and is deciding on the details, a representative said.
