Happy 30th Anniversary to the Friday Soundtrack, originally released April 11, 1995.
Editor’s Note: Only select songs featured on the ‘Friday’ Soundtrack are available in authorized form via major streaming platforms.
Generally the sign of very good movie soundtrack is if you can successfully picture the characters in the film while listening to it. Director Quentin Taratino has understood this throughout his career, taking it quite literally for the masterful soundtracks to Reservoir DogsI (1992) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). It’s also something Ice Cube and DJ Pooh understood when putting together the soundtrack for the F. Gary Gray directed film Friday, which they wrote themselves.
Friday is rightfully regarded to be among the era’s most entertaining comedies, a cross between Clerks (1994) and a Cheech & Chong film. Many of its best moments feature stars Ice Cube and Chris Tucker sitting in front of a house, talking shit, and occasionally smoking weed. They observe and interact with the neighborhood’s unique characters, from the local crackhead to the shady preacher to the neighborhood bully. It’s probably one of the few films to use the line, “After that day, nothing was ever the same again” completely unironically, and still not fly off the rails.
The characters in Friday all listen to a lot of music. Music is constantly emanating out of radios and cars (or cars with radios) Some of it is the gangsta rap of the era. Some of it is old school. But it all sounds like the type of music one would hear while traversing a South Central LA neighborhood on a sunny Friday.
Released 30 years ago, the soundtrack features music from some of the best artists making music at the time (much of it West Coast based), some new artists, and soul and funk royalty. The mix doesn’t sound like a forced attempt to broaden the soundtrack’s appeal, but, rather, it flows naturally. Many of the songs sound as if they were recorded with the soundtrack in mind (with a few exceptions), but all of it gels well with the film’s feel.
Friday opens with its title track, a rowdy party-oriented song from Ice Cube himself. Of all the films he’s ever starred in, he’s made it a habit to record the high-end lead-off track for the film’s soundtrack. Here he describes cutting loose with his homies on a Friday evening, cruising through the neighborhoods and tearing up house parties. Ice Cube pulls double duty, doing an excellent job behind the boards, chopping a section of Lafayette Afro Rock Band’s “Darkest Light” and incorporating vocals from Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “Bertha Butt Boogie.”
The soundtrack features Dr. Dre’s “Keep Their Heads Ringin’,” which, much like every song Dre touched in the mid-1990s, turned into a massive hit. The track bears many of the hallmarks of Dre’s post-Chronic (1992) production style, involving heavy use of haunting keys and synthesizers. It also features a very catchy hook, sung by Nanci Fletcher and inspired by The Sequence’s “Funk You Up.” The single was soon certified Gold by the RIAA.
The soundtrack benefits from the presence of other established hardcore artists. Cypress Hill’s “Roll It Up, Light It Up” is another excellent example of the group playing to its strengths, recording an outstanding ode to smoking herb. The song treats listeners to a preview of the murky, watery sound that would dominate their upcoming third album, Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom (1995).
“Friday Night” features Houston’s Scarface teaming-up with CJ Mac, a South Central-based rapper who had just signed to Rap-A-Lot Records at the time. The song plays like a prequel to the “I Need a Favor” interlude from Scarface’s The World Is Yours (1993), as Mac takes Scarface on a wild tour of the city, including securing him some essential female attention.
“Lettin’ N*****s Know” by Threat is one of my personal favorites on the soundtrack. Threat had worked extensively with DJ Pooh, with the producer working behind the boards for much of the underrated classic Sickinnahead (1993), but remained under the radar since its release. Their collaboration on Friday is a decidedly weird one, but still entertaining, as Threat lays into Pooh’s squiggly track with a winding and unorthodox delivery.
The soundtrack also features “Take a Hit,” one of the first solo tracks released by Mack 10. Though the Inglewood-born rapper would become known for his more street-oriented content, “Take a Hit,” one of the better songs in his catalogue, focuses on the merits of just kicking back and smoking good weed.
The back half of Friday features fewer new songs that fit with the film’s theme, but what it does feature is still dope regardless. One of the better entries comes from Tha Alkaholiks. I’d imagine the drunken trio originally intended “Coast II Coast” for their sophomore album of the same name, released less than two months earlier. It offers a solid change of pace here, as the three emcees in the crew deliver punchline-laden verses to a sample of Maynard Ferguson’s “Mister Mellow.” However, the entertaining interlude where the West Coast Liks and a crew of East Coast women struggle to decipher each other’s regional slang underscores that this song really should have been included on Coast II Coast (1995).
The Bay Area duo of EA-Ski and CMT, then signed to Priority, contribute the dope “Blast If I Have To.” The track is the most aggressive song on the soundtrack, with Ski promising to eliminate enemies over an immaculately produced and mixed track. On the song’s last verse, Ski delivers a particularly vicious dis to fellow Bay rapper Dangerous Dame, though never calling him out by name.
2 Live Crew’s “Hoochie Mama” takes things briefly away from the West Coast sound, as the Miami-based crew contributes an energetic sprint of a track. It’s also possibly the last 2 Live Crew song released featuring all four members of the original lineup, as rapper Brother Marquis and DJ/producer Mr. Mixx briefly reunited with Uncle Luke and Fresh Kid Ice after leaving the group a couple of years earlier. They unintentionally go out with a bang, with Marquis and Ice kicking their verses over sped-up guitars and thumping 808s. Like a few of their other soundtrack-exclusive recordings, it’s one of the best songs that 2 Live Crew ever released.
The album also includes numerous old school tracks, dating back to the 1970s and early 1980s. Some fit in with the film’s theme (Rick James’ “Mary Jane”), while others are from legendary LA-based groups (Rose Royce’s “I Want to Get Next To You”), and still others are LA radio classics (Roger Troutman’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”). Later that year, Priority Records would release Old School Friday, a companion soundtrack. It featured some of the aforementioned old school jams, plus other standards from the era by artists like War, the Temptations, and Curtis Mayfield.
The film Friday still holds up as a fan favorite, with some quotes from the movie entering the overall cultural lexicon (“Bye Felicia,” anyone?). Its soundtrack may not be mentioned by many as one of the all-time classics, but it is chock full of exceptional original material and old school anthems. Like all great soundtracks, listening to it can transport you into the realm of the film, authentically capturing the listening experience of mid-1990s LA music heads.
Listen: