Tough Guys

Tough Guys is a daring, widescreen, progressive funk album from one of the genre’s finest craftsmen. Because Hayes was Black and rooted in R&B radio, he didn’t get lumped in with the prog-rock groups then making waves on the rock charts, but he should have been.

He was making music as expansive and expressive as Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Yes; he was just doing it in a different context. The soundtrack for Hayes’ first major film role, Tough Guys, would echo throughout history as much for the way it matched the grimy, over-the-top story of the film it accompanies, but also in the way its songs were chopped up and re-imagined, appearing in everything from Geto Boys songs to Quentin Tarantino movies.