Curtis Mayfield composed and recorded the soundtrack to the 1972 film Super Fly. The album was released by Curtom Records on July 11, 1972, and accompanied Gordon Parks Jr.'s blaxploitation crime film about a cocaine dealer trying to leave the underworld. Mayfield also appears in the movie with members of his backing band.
The soundtrack became far more than background music. Mayfield wrote socially conscious songs that questioned poverty, drug abuse, exploitation, and the apparent glamour of criminal life. That perspective sometimes contrasts with the film's more ambiguous treatment of its protagonist. The result was a landmark concept album in soul and funk, often discussed alongside Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
Two singles drove the record's success: "Freddie's Dead" reached No. 2 on the U.S. soul chart and No. 4 on the pop chart, while the title track reached No. 5 on the soul chart and No. 8 on the pop chart. Super Fly became one of the rare soundtracks to earn more commercially than the film it accompanied and helped make Mayfield a sought-after composer for later film projects.