Redemption songs

Former middleweight champion Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter may never have been released from his triple murder sentence if it were not for a book and a song. The book is Carter's own The Sixteenth Round, which inspired a group of Canadian teens to fight for his freedom (now chronicled in Norman Jewison's Oscar-contending film, The Hurricane). The song was Bob Dylan's "Hurricane," a call to Carter's plight and the systematic racism that caused it. How appropriate then that this song has been combined with a mix of contemporary and classic hip-hop and R&B on the film's excellent soundtrack.

The soundtrack does not begin with Dylan's "Hurricane," but with a powerful rap version by the Roots and their extended family—Common, Mos Def, Dice Raw, Flo Brown and the Jazzyfatnastees. If the original "Hurricane," an eight-minute fury of violins, guitar, and raw truth is still the best song on the album, the hip-hop "Hurricane" is a close second. The dark, guitar-laced song is filled with lyrics like this Mos Def couplet: "I am the inescapable, the irresistible, the unnegotiable, the unchallenged—I am time/I stole the measures, control the elements, I hold the evidence, I tell the story—I am time." No song can fully express the frustration of a 20-year prison sentence, but the two title tracks come as close as possible.

Carter's story began in the '60s, so there are plenty of classics from that era too, like Ray Charles' "Hard Times No One Knows," Etta James' funky "In The Basement," and Gil Scott-Heron's famous spoken-word piece, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Surprisingly perhaps, these songs fit nicely with the contemporary R&B songs such as the Jazzyfatnastees' "I Don't Know," Me'shell Ndgeocello's cover of The Last Poets' "Isolation," and Melky Sedeck's beautiful "Still I Rise," to form an uncommonly cohesive soundtrack with recurring themes of struggle and redemption. Though there is at least one unnecessary song here, (Clark Anderson's "So Amazing," yet another sappy version of "Amazing Grace") the soundtrack will be worth playing long after the movie is on free TV. (UNI/MCA)

—Joshua Drimmer

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