Black Moses: The Hot-Buttered Life and Soul of Isaac Hayes

The first biography of soul pioneer Isaac Hayes, whose groundbreaking music provided the foundation for hip-hop and a new racial paradigm.

“Black men could finally stand up and be men because here's Black Moses; he's the epitome of Black masculinity. Chains that once represented bondage and slavery now can be a sign of power and strength and sexuality and virility.” —Isaac Hayes

Within the stoned soul picnic of Black music icons in the ’60s and ’70s, only one could bill himself without a blush as Moses, demanding liberation for Black men with his notions of life and self—Isaac Lee Hayes Jr., the beautifully sheen, shaded, and chain-spangled acolyte of cool, whose high-toned “lounge music” and proto-rap was soul’s highest order—heard on twenty-two albums and selling millions of records. Hayes’s stunning self-portraits, his obsessive pleas about love, sex, and guilt bathed in lush orchestral flights and soul-stirring bass lines, drove other soul men like Barry White to libidinous license. But Hayes, who called himself a “renegade,” was a man of many parts. While he thrived on soulful remakes of pop standards, his biggest coup was writing and producing the epic soundtrack to



Read more