Barry Michael Cooper

Writing · born 12 June 1958 · Harlem, New York, USA

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".

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.

Where to start: Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (2016).