I remember this song from when I was younger - I heard it so much that it's not possible for me to form a new opinion on it, and I didn't even need to listen to it just now to remember it. It could probably be best classified as urban soul-funk.
Isaac Hayes (1942-2008) was from Covington, Tennessee. In the 1960s, he and his songwriting partner David Porter wrote a number of hit songs for Stax Records recording artists, including "Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Comin'".
Hayes started a recording career of his own later in the 1960s. He placed a couple of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 early in his recording career that did not get airplay in Toronto: his cover of "Walk On By" reached #30 in 1969 and his version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" reached #22 early in 1971.
In 1971, Hayes composed the music for the film Shaft, which featured a private detective named John Shaft. The title theme of this movie, naturally called "Theme From Shaft", reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song.
After this, Hayes continued on with his musical career and branched out into film and television. In 1997, Hayes became an original cast member of the animated television series South Park, in which he played Chef, a school lunchroom cook. Hayes also became a member of the Church of Scientology in the mid-1990s; he left South Park in 2006 after they had produced an episode that satirized Scientology (though reports differ on whether he quit the show or whether someone made the decision to quit it for him). He suffered a series of strokes during the final years of his life, one of which killed him.
Created October 23, 2026.