Los Angeles, 'Boyz N The Hood' and the enduring legacy of John Singleton (2024)

John Singleton was undaunted as a recent graduate of USC’s film school while making a coming-of-age film unique to South Central Los Angeles. He was doing so while still figuring out life himself.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that when he received word the streets were watching and had words of caution, the ambitious director responded with the bravado of youth.

“f*ck that, f*ck him,” Singleton said at the time. “I’m going to do what I f*cking want.”

A night earlier, movie executive Steve Nicolaides met with Cle Shaheed Sloan, a member of the Anthem Park Bloods known on the street as Bone, who sensed the potential for trouble regarding one of the final scenes in Singleton’s classic film, “Boyz N the Hood.”

Ice Cube’s character, Doughboy, was going to kill three members of the Bloods to avenge the killing of his brother. At the director’s insistence, the scene was to be shot across from the Jungles, a neighborhood that belonged to the Bloods. But when word of that plan reached Bone, he offered a bit of advice to Nicolaides.

Singleton was keeping it a bit too real for Sloan’s comfort.

“I don’t give a f*ck about your little movie, but I can’t control everybody,” Bone told Nicolaides, a producer of the film. “So if some 14-year-old thinks he’s going to get his stripes by busting a cap in Ice Cube, that might happen. Think about that.”

Singleton cared so much about authenticity that it took a plea from one of his stars to change his mind.

“Ice Cube came up to him and said, ‘John listen to Steve man, let’s do this smart,’” Nicolaides recalled. “Let’s not get killed basically. So we changed the location to Eat-a-Burger down by the Crenshaw Mall.”

It’s been 30 years since Singleton’s film hit theaters nationwide to critical and fan acclaim. The movie portrayed the lives of three childhood friends navigating pending adulthood in South Central, infamous at the time for gang violence and the crack cocaine epidemic. Singleton took the messages of West Coast hip-hop — from the likes of Ice-T and N.W.A. — and put them on the big screen for an audience that might have ducked the realities of life in places such as Compton, Watts, Inglewood, Long Beach and South Central.

It was a time when Black voices like Spike Lee had begun to emerge in film. Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” had been a success, telling the story of racial tension in Brooklyn. It was a great film, but it didn’t tell Singleton’s story.

Singleton was representing the West Coast and shared a necessary narrative at a time when negativity about life for Black men in Los Angeles was the norm in mainstream media.

Singleton told the story of the hood with humanity.

The film gave a realistic alternative to telling the story of day-to-day life for people like myself, who was living on the Eastside of Long Beach in July 1991 after spending my early years in South Central.

Singleton died in April 2019 after suffering a stroke at the age of 51. But his legacy as an American storyteller, specifically those in the Los Angeles area, remains through films like “Baby Boy” and the FX series “Snowfall”. But it all began with “Boyz,” and an ambitious director who had the audacity to believe he could reach greatness.

To understand why “Boyz N the Hood” was so important, you have to understand life in South Central L.A. in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

There were a record 771 gang-related murders in Los Angeles County in 1991. The gang database used by law enforcement identified nearly half of all Black men in Los Angeles County between 21-24 as gang members.

“In the mid to late ’80s, you have all this media imagery about crack cocaine and everything attached to it,” said Dr. Todd Boyd, the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture and Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. “And part of that narrative is this focus on gang culture.”

Crime, drugs and poverty can be found in any city, but as Boyd notes, how it is represented is unique to each community. The Crips and Bloods represented that for the Los Angeles area.

News reports detailing drive-by shootings only fed into the hysteria. Movies like “Colors” that told the story from the police’s point of view didn’t help, either.

“When you look at ‘Boyz N the Hood,’ you see there are gangb*ngers, there’s a whole gang culture, but people have to live in these communities,” Boyd said. “So what somebody might look at as a gangb*nger might be your next-door neighbor, might be your relative, might be your friend. They’re part of the community. It’s not like these people are aliens, you have to live amongst them and I think that’s what the film shows is these guys start out when they’re kids and they’re like kids anywhere, innocent and curious, and over time, things change.”

Inspired by the coming-of-age film “Stand By Me,” Singleton wanted to develop his version of that film for South Central.

Still, that didn’t mean the public wanted to see South Central through Singleton’s prism. Singleton wrote his script and refused to give over control of his vision.

Cube, whom Singleton wrote the character of Doughboy for specifically, even had his doubts. Cube told the story of L.A. in his music and had received backlash and cries for censorship over his lyrics.

Cube wrote the song “Boyz-N-the-hood” that was performed by Eazy E, and it’s also where the title of the movie originates. He’d written some of the most poignant lyrics about life in the hood, including the song that infuriated the F.B.I. “f*ck The Police” while a member of N.W.A.

His solo debut in 1990, “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted,” was the vision of a young Black man living in one of Los Angeles County’s inner-city communities. Being hated, getting robbed, living in public housing, drive-by shootings and more were a part of the album. The Source, the preeminent rap publication at the time, gave it a five-mic (classic) rating.

So Cube had already been telling the story, but what Singleton wanted to do was different. Cube remains in awe of what his friend and mentor in the movie industry accomplished.

“It’s still amazing to be able to have a great filmmaker like John Singleton put this movie together as a labor of love to South Central Los Angeles and how we grew up,” said Cube, who made his film debut in the movie.

He recalled reading the script for the first time. He was stunned at its contents — a movie about his neighborhood and the way he had grown up.

“Is this sh*t movie-worthy?” he asked his wife, Kim.

“They’re making a movie about it,” she replied. “So I guess so.”

Singleton sought to show the nuances of growing up in an inner city, economically disadvantaged Los Angeles neighborhood. The three main characters, Tre Styles, and brothers Ricky and Darren “Doughboy” Baker, go looking for a dead body, much like the characters in “Stand By Me.”

Young Doughboy, played by Baha Jackson, wears a striped shirt in homage to Vern Tessio, who was also a chubby kid played by Jerry O’Connell in “Stand By Me.”

Doughboy fading away at the end of “Boyz N The Hood” is an homage to that 1986 cult classic. One of the reasons Singleton wanted to work with Nicolaides was because he was the production manager on the film.

“It was pretty much a hood rift of ‘Stand By Me,’ and I didn’t realize it until much later,” Jackson said. “It’s pretty much ‘Stand By Me’ in a hood form, which is genius. He told a good story and it was very palatable, especially to people from L.A. and California.”

Reality was central to Singleton’s mission with the film. That began with where he shot the movie. It was actually shot in South Central. The houses and areas were authentic, which was in contrast to what Nicolaides saw in “Colors.”

“I saw (‘Colors’) and I hated it because every mural should have been in a museum and it’s just not like that in South Central or it wasn’t then,” he said. “So we basically shot at all practical locations, we built nothing and basically we did nothing. We found great locations and we used them.”

“Colors” was directed by Dennis Hopper, who is not from the community. Singleton was determined not to allow anyone else to take over his film and let someone from “Idaho or Encino” tell his story.

That would become one of the endearing parts of the film. Anyone from the area could see these were real places in the community.

Malcolm Norrington was Singleton’s friend, classmate at USC and a roommate. He also played a role as one of the three men who antagonized Ricky, Doughboy and Tre. Doughboy eventually killed the three men. He’s officially known as “Knucklehead No. 1” in the film.

Norrington said Singleton was intentional about keeping the movie true to South Central.

“It was important to him that he shot it in the neighborhood,” Norrington said. “He wasn’t going to shoot it on the backlot. It was important he used people in the neighborhood as much as possible. It was important the story was told, representing each and every aspect of us and who we are and how we are.”

Nicolaides said he has no idea how casting director Jaki Brown found Jackson. He said they were “lucky” with how the cast came together.

Jackson was in the seventh grade, living at 60th and Van Ness, a few blocks from where the film was shot. If necessary, Jackson probably could have walked to the set.

Jackson said a member of his family knew someone working on the film as they were looking to cast the part of young Doughboy, and when they described the character, it was him. He instantly bonded with Singleton.

“Now that I think about it, he was really just a young kid,” Jackson said.

Jackson, who is now a chef and goes by “Chef Dough,” can appreciate the realism of the film 30 years later, especially since it takes place in his neighborhood. There are also subtle parts of the film that resonate.

Furious Styles, played by Laurence Fishburne, represents one of the Black fathers in the community that wasn’t discussed amid the focus on gang culture. Tre goes to college, as does his girlfriend, Brandi, played by Nia Long. Styles works in real estate and owns his home, and his ex-wife has an advanced degree.

Singleton mixed in all kinds of people who lived in South Central, and not in a way that glamorized gang life.

“You had ‘Colors’ before that, but it was more of a caricature,” Jackson said. “This was a real story. Two brothers grow up in the same house but get treated differently. Everybody knew brothers like that, brothers like Doughboy and Ricky.”

Some of the casting was good fortune, too. Fishburne recommended Angela Bassett for the part of Reva Styles, his ex-wife and Tre’s mother. Tyra Ferrell wanted to play that part, Nicolaides said, and wasn’t looking to play Brenda Baker, Ricky and Doughboy’s mother. Ferrell, however, proved to be brilliant playing a mother dealing with a son she adored (Ricky) and one she loathed (Doughboy). Or as Nicolaides said, Ferrell “ripped it up.” Regina King “nailed” her audition as Shalika.

Fishburne joined Nicolaides and Singleton at Brown’s office as they looked for actors to play Tre and Ricky.

As fate would have it, Cuba Gooding Jr. (Tre) blew them away while auditioning for Tre. The next actor was Morris Chestnut as Ricky. He blew them away.

“I looked at John and Fish and said, ‘Well we’ve got Ricky and Tre, should we go have lunch?’” Nicolaides recounted, even though he said Singleton always took credit for that line.

Casting Cube was Singleton’s plan from the time he began writing the script. Singleton was an intern on “The Arsenio Hall Show” when Cube showed up and had a problem with Hall not having N.W.A. on the show. Singleton told him then he had a movie he was going to put him in.

Understandably, Cube dismissed someone who was still in college telling him he had big dreams, but Singleton was persistent.

By the time Singleton was ready to make the film, he had Cube come in to read for the part of Doughboy. Cube hadn’t read the script and it showed.

“You f*cked me man, you didn’t read this, did you?” Nicolaides remembered Singleton saying to Cube after chasing him down after he left the reading.

Singleton told Cube to read the script and come back in two days. He did and Cube’s movie career was born.

Singleton was confident he had a film worthy of an Academy Award when it was completed. It had the realism he wanted. The music purposely leaned toward a West Coast sound.

One of the first tests of the film’s strength was when it was shown to 10 executives at the DeMille Theater at Sony. All White men 50 and older.

Theoretically, this was an audience rap music could not connect with, but would a movie about many of the same stories be any different?

“I looked over at the 10 White guys and half of them were crying,” Nicolaides said. “I said, ‘OK, we’ve got them.’ It was like the best feeling ever.”

Within an hour, talk shifted to taking “Boyz N the Hood” to the Cannes Film Festival. The movie would be shown with subtitles to European audiences in France.

The film received a standing ovation.

“That let me know it’s movie-worthy, people get it and now people understand what we’re going through,” Cube said. “An inkling of what we go through in the hood, growing up in South Central L.A.”

That’s not to say there wasn’t any negativity attached to the movie. After there were some conflicts at the showing of another movie that shined a light on the complexities of inner-city life, “New Jack City,” concerns were raised in the media as to whether a movie that some thought was just about gangb*nging would lead to violence.

Boyd said this racist notion that Black people would be unruly if they saw someone shot in a movie dates back to the days of boxer Jack Johnson in the early 1900s. White people perpetuated the fear that if Black people saw footage of Johnson beating white people, it would lead to Black people slugging white people in the streets.

“This sense of how this movie is going to cause a riot and when you look at the history of that, it’s rooted in this sense Black people are really dumb and child-like and can’t distinguish between fact and fiction,” Boyd said. “So the movie’s going to start a riot, and chaos is going to transpire because these people don’t know this is a movie, and that was all just racist conjecture.”

There were instances of violence, but anyone who was growing up at that time could tell you those situations happened at movies, at the mall or walking home from school. There were nearly 800 gang-related murders in 1991, so do you really think a movie incited anything?

None of that delayed Singleton’s ascension into the Hollywood elite.

Singleton became a celebrity. He was just 24 when he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, the youngest nominee ever and first African American. He was also nominated for best screenplay.

Singleton didn’t win, but he’d already made his mark as a groundbreaker in the film industry.

Singleton went on to direct a myriad of projects, but he was at his best when telling stories about the City of Los Angeles. That was his passion and where he excelled. “Poetic Justice” and “Higher Learning” didn’t earn the same level of critical acclaim, but they are a part of Singleton’s L.A. legacy.

“John always wanted to tell our story — he was never a gun for hire,” Norrington said. “… John always wanted to write and direct our stories because it was important to him that he told our stories.”

After Singleton, there were a variety of movies that told different versions of the L.A. story. “Menace II Society” followed, and Cube and DJ Pooh would co-write the comedy “Friday,” which has gained its own place in South Central film lore.

Suddenly, mainstream America was able to see all the aspects of life I saw growing up. Sure, there was pain and trauma. But there were also a lot of laughs, like any other neighborhood.

And there are more ways to keep those voices loud and clear.

“It’s something that looks to be more sustainable due to the technological circ*mstances and historical moment,” Boyd said. “But you can’t really talk about it without talking about what was happening in the early ’90s when something like ‘Boyz N the Hood’ really changed the game.”

Nicolaides collaborated on multiple films with Singleton, and he believes Singleton’s legacy is still strongly connected to music and seen through the likes of artists such as the late Nipsey Hussle and Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar.

“John was co*cky and strong-willed, but John never left the hood,” Nicolaides said. “And when he did, his movies were lifeless, but when he came back to the hood, whether it be ‘Snowfall’ or ‘Baby Boy,’ the power was there, the voice was there.”

Cube considered Singleton a mentor and friend. He appreciates Singleton was able to put the topics from rap music into film.

Being in a Singleton film was to be a part of a family. Many of the cast members from “Boyz N the Hood” appeared in other Singleton projects or were behind the scenes.

It’s a major reason Singleton is missed. He took the time to care about those who were a part of his projects and provided opportunities for people who otherwise would not have had them in Hollywood.

Rappers, singers and undiscovered talents owe their time being in film to a visionary who dared to tell his own story and believe it would happen.

“I think the world is a better place because ‘Boyz N the Hood’ came out,“ Cube said.

(Top photos: Rob Kim, Aaron Rapoport / Getty Pool)