This piece originally appeared in Volume 3 of the fantastic True Laurels zine. Check it out here.

God damn. Hold up. OK. I want you to put down the blunt, kitty cat, iPhone, Xbox controller or whatever the fuck for a minute and clear your mind’s eye. Picture the most pristine pair of gators this side of the Everglades. Feel the impossible warmth of the most luxuriant chinchilla furs, long before those shits were endangered. Hear the infernal gurgle of the big-block engines of Caddy slabs before they were retrofitted status symbols for Houston rappers.

A bygone era, when men were men, and the women loved them for it, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t bust your ass if you started set trippin’ and gettin’ outta pocket. The year was 1975, and Dolemite was his name and fuckin’ up motherfuckers was his game (his words, not mine).

Some young bucks or the otherwise uninitiated may not know what’s really good with this icon of macking, but there’s a real good chance that your Pep-Pep got his Smango Unchained on with your Mem-Mem after being inspired downstairs by this flick, a Teddy Pendergrass album and more than a few swigs of E&J. And. Out. Comes. Baby.

Released two years after Max Julien and Richard Pryor’s comparatively polished “The Mack,” “Dolemite” is like an acid-drenched, glitched-out, made-a-wrong-turn-onto-Fear Street-but-still-came-out-clean-as-a-motherfucker spin on the fresh-out-pimp-making-his-way-in-the-world trip. The kung-fu hustler was a tangier flavor of Mr. Steal Your Girl Wish A Nigga Would, a twisted era’s grimy alternative to uptown brothers like John Shaft and Superfly.

Like his name suggests, the homie was sooooolid, solid as a rock. The inimitable Rudy Ray Moore was the original Don Dada Long Dick Daddy From Cincinnati, layin’ down the sukiyaki kamikaze Nazi Nazi, copy papi? And even when the shit got thick, his Number One could rest assured that he would save her. Yes, like Danny Glover.

The artist formerly known as “Prince Dumarr” would release a number of R&B joints and comedy albums before usurping the Dolemite persona from an urban legend known in LA’s seedier scenes. Not unlike how Heath Ledger’s Joker took the belt from Jack’s, if you wanna get all contemporary with the shit.

Man and legend became one, and the rest is, as they say, history. What more would you expect from Mr. Moore, the brother responsible for such comedy albums as “This Pussy Belongs To Me,” “I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing,” and “Sensuous Black Man?” It’s a thin line between love and hate god dammit.

The words of Dolemite confidant the Hamburger Pimp sum up the vibe nicely (see ODB’s “Baby, I Got Your Money” video for a visual reference): “I’m so bad, I kick my own ass twice a day.” Isn’t that an ethos each of us aspire to daily? Being as bad as we wanna be, but still being righteous enough to look inward and make positive change when the situation calls for it. (Spoiler Alert: I legit tear up every time I see the Hamburger Pimp get swiss-cheesed up).

If you’re pressed about the plot, shit shakes out kinda like this: After a frame-up launched by The Man and nemesis Willie Green (played in sinister fashion by the film’s director D’Urville Martin) lands him in lockup for 20 years and threatens to end his macking days for good, hood stalwart Queen Bee, her flex stuck on 1000, generally speaking, is able to spring Yung ‘Mite. We are shown that it’s chill to work with the cops if it means hemming up the crab ass fuccboi that tried to put you on ice.

Despite my best efforts in a past life, I’ve never been locked up, but I can be damn sure that if I ever was, there wouldn’t be bodacious babes waiting outside the prison gates in a big body whip with furs and gators on deck to ensure I was fitted up and shinin’ to the maximum. Once on the level (after being domed up in the plush leather backseat), Dolemite commences the ass kickin’ with his finger lickin’ good bevy of kung-fu killer down-ass chicks. Squad.

For all you milennials or whatever who are spoiled by the glut of high-gloss, prettyboy fisticuffs seen in endless Matrix clones, When JB screamed on “The Big Payback,” “I don’t know ka-ra-te, but I know kuh-ray-zay!,” he was talking about the dude Dolemite. And maybe about himself a little bit.

Sure, Rudy may not be able to get full extension on that roundhouse kick, but the tight-assed pig-in-a-blanket (that’s my pet name for detectives) who was steppin’ to him a minute ago is on the ground now isn’t he? And if you want on-point editing, holla at a copy of Final Cut Pro and knock yourself out. Put a quarter in your ass cuz you played yourself. It ain’t that type of party. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.

In an age of Stand Your Ground and “dehumanizing stares,” I’m not one to incite or condone racial violence, even if it is in retribution for the cavalcade of wrongs dealt black and brown people over however many years. Yet, in the wake of Emmitt Till, Medgar Evars, four little girls, Malcolm and MLK and the cities that burned after they shed their mortal coils, I do get a darkly dubious, vicarious satisfaction out of seeing Doley dropkick a new-look Bull Connor-type dude in the ass. And damn me for that.

The ‘70s were a wild, fucked up decade to be sure (not that we’re doing too hot today). And as such, I like to use the sight of Dolemite crane-kicking a racist cop in the dick in a fantasy world as counterprogramming to the occasional revisionist fairy tale of Nixon as “not such a bad guy when you really look at his career on the whole” (actually overheard in the realm).

When Dolemite throat-chops that one Will Ferrell-looking cop and shoves an emptied sack of coke in his mouth, telling him, “That’s for fucking with me you no-business, born-insecure junkyard motherfucker!,” I break into a slow clap without fail. I know that’s not very spiritual, but what are you gonna do.

I can only imagine what it must have felt like to have taken this shit in not even 10 years after the Civil Rights Act was hammered out, with (most of) America’s codified racism, usually manifested as sweeping segregation, having since been dismantled after years of pain and strife. Dolemite, if only within the sphere of film, made sure the Silent Majority actually stayed silent, forever, delivering poetic justice by way of size 13 Hush Puppies.

And looking back, how can one front on the fact that the rap game owes so much to Rudy Ray. As a youth, and even today, the famous “Signifying Monkey” and parking lot toasts were and continue to be way more appealing than a lot of hip-hop I’m bombarded with.

Without Dolemite, there most likely would never have been Jeromey-rome from Martin, Digital Underground, 2 Chainz, Dipset, Lil’ Terio, “A Goofy Movie” or the Based God. And if lovin’ them is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. Snoop himself told the New York Times in 2008 after Moore’s death that he would not exist without Dolemite. And what the fuck kind of world would that be? Not one I want any part of, that’s for damn sure.

In a world where the bankability of a film reigns supreme in the corridors of power in Hollywood, with indie filmmakers edged out of the frame more and more as time passes, who knows if we’ll ever see another “Dolemite.” Perhaps if we soaked up more light waves radiated by the likes of the “BONE-CRUSHING, SKULL-SPLITTING, BRAIN-BLASTING ACTION” R. R. Moore and Co. brought us, and suffered through less of the bad trips that are any given Tyler Perry flick or three hour car/phone/toy commercials masquerading as films, maybe the world would be a chiller place. Just maybe.