Black Moses

For all the name Black Moses conjures, for all that it confers, it was not a name Isaac Hayes gave himself; that title was bestowed by a radio DJ sermonizing an intro to one of his songs. It was not a name Isaac Hayes — raised by his god-fearing grandparents in a former sharecropper’s shed after his parents died before he turned two years old — thought was even appropriate. It seemed sacrilegious to him. But that name, it meant something that even Hayes had to acknowledge. He had ascended to a plane that no Black performer before him had ever reached before. He topped the R&B charts and, eventually, the pop charts without ever having to compromise who Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was. He had shown his people that James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” edict was possible. He dripped in gold chains inside his album gatefolds and drove cars literally trimmed in it. Unapologetically.