On this day, 34 years ago, the cult-classic crime thriller New Jack City arrived in theaters across America. The story of the rise and fall of Nino Brown and the Cash Money Brothers has inspired Hip-Hop culture for a quarter-century and continues to permeate the culture that made it a success.
New Jack City came about at a pivotal time. In 1991, Hip-Hop was still a fledging music genre and culture, looking to legitimize itself in the eyes of mainstream America officially. In addition, the blaxploitation film genre had been defunct for over a decade, leaving a gaping hole in “Black Hollywood.” New Jack City was a harbinger of the resurgence of Black actors, writers, and filmmakers in Hollywood and the crystallization of Hip-Hop’s synergistic capabilities.
The film also catapulted actors like Wesley Snipes, who played the lead role as the morally barren kingpin Nino Brown and Chris Rock stick-up-kid-turned-crackhead-informant “Pookie,” into stardom. The film’s director, Mario Van Peebles, also made his directorial debut with the film, in which he also starred. Ice T, who also played a major role in New Jack City as NYPD detective “Scotty Appleton,” spoke with Rock on his “Final Level” podcast about some of the behind-the-scenes of the cult classic.
Chris Rock: At the time, you and I were the most popular people in the cast, really, just ’cause we’d done s**t.
Ice-T: We’d done things.
Chris Rock: Nobody knew Mario [Van Peebles]. Nobody knew Wesley [Snipes].
Ice-T: Wesley had done Major League.
Chris Rock: No one knew “G-Money,” you know, Allen Payne.
Ice-T: That was what got me confident enough to act.
Chris Rock: And you were actually making money. [Laughs] I was broke.
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Ice-T: … You know, it was an interesting experience. New Jack City was a new-jack movie. The director was a new-jack.
Chris Rock: The producers were new-jacks, new-jack actors, new-jack soundtrack. Remember we kept runnin’ out of money? There was a couple of times, while we were filming, we were like, “This s**t is getting shut down.” Like, the chase on the bikes was [suppose to be] a car-chase. But it turned into a bike-chase; we had no money! [Laughs] Somebody had to think fast.
The film was shot on an $8 million budget and premiered at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 1991. It was later released nationally on March 8, 1991, raking in $7,039,622 in opening weekend sales. Later, it became the highest-grossing indie film of 1991, with $47,624,253 domestically.
Nino Brown has become a regularly referenced movie character in rap lyrics for decades. A simple search of “Nino Brown” on RapGenius shows over 4000 references to the surface by artists worldwide. It’s safe to say Nino and New Jack City will continue to inspire future generations, and if you disagree…