John Singleton

One of the most relevant cinematic voices of his generation, John Singleton entered into the public consciousness with the release of his landmark urban drama "Boyz n the Hood" (1991) in 1991. Born in Los Angeles, California, Singleton graduated from the University of Southern California's Filmic Writing program in 1990 and sold the script for the film to Columbia Pictures that same year. Based largely on his own experiences growing up in South Central Los Angeles, "Boyz n the Hood" explored issues of race, class, and violence with an artistic finesse that caught both audiences and critics by surprise. It garnered Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and for Best Director-the latter of which made history as Singleton, at 24, was the youngest person ever nominated in the category, as well as the first African-American. Singleton would continue to deal with similar issues in his following film, "Poetic Justice" (1993), which starred Janet Jackson as a young woman who expresses her emotions regarding the injustices around her through striking poetry, which was provided for the film by Maya Angelou. Confronting social questions would remain Singleton's focus in the collegiate-set "Higher Learning" (1995), as well as in the historical drama "Rosewood" (1997), which depicted the 1923 massacre of African-Americans in Rosewood, Florida. Though he would lighten his tone slightly with his rollicking remake of the blaxploitation classic "Shaft" (2000), Singleton remained just as interested in exploring the black experience in film, even inverting many of the hyper-masculine stereotypes about urban men he himself had helped perpetuate in the thought-provoking "Baby Boy" (2001). Throughout the 2000s, Singleton enjoyed using his position in Hollywood to elevate other voices, taking on a producer role on the films "Hustle & Flow" (2005) and "Black Snake Moan" (2006). In 2017, he began producing, writing, and directing the acclaimed series "Snowfall" (FX, 2017-), a drama set during the height of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles-a subject Singleton had been peripherally dealing with in much of his work for decades. Tragically, Singleton died in 2019 following a stroke. He was 51 years old.