Brown Sugar

Part of Summer Night Cinema: 50 Years of Hip Hop, celebrating the art form's impact on music, film, and pop culture. Curated by critic Ernest Hardy.

This feel-good, crowd-pleasing ode to old-school hip hop and Black love shimmers on screen thanks to writer/director Rick Famuyiwa and his all-star cast, including Queen Latifah, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), Sanaa Lathan, and Taye Diggs. Part tongue-in-cheek war of the sexes, part sincere love letter to the power of hip hop to “simply amaze you / craze you, pay you / Do whatever you say do” (Mos Def/Yasiin Bey), Brown Sugar is an invitation to laugh, nod your head, swoon, and fall in love under cover of the theater’s darkness—a hip hop remix of the classic Hollywood romantic comedy.

(2002, dir. Rick Famuyika, color, 109 minutes)

Summer Night Cinema is sponsored by Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein