Hip Hop had a huge night at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards and not all of it was televised.
Don Cheadle won praise for his dual starring and directing of the 2015 Mile Davis biopic, Miles Ahead, but it’s the accompanying soundtrack that will be forever etched in the annals of history. It took home the Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.
Released on April 1, 2016, the soundtrack featured the likes of Miles Davis, Robert Glasper, Don Cheadle, Taylor Eigsti, Ewan McGregor, Phil Schaap — and Pharoahe Monch, who contributed to the anchor track, “Gone 2015” (which also closed out the movie).
Relishing in the big honor, Monch tells HipHopDX that he’s “part of something great,” downplaying the notion that his contribution was bigger than the sum of parts.
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Prior to the soundtrack’s release, Monch revealed how it was Cheadle who asked him to come on board to help out with the project.
“Robert Glasper was involved heavily on the soundtrack. And Don Cheadle is a huge supporter of my music and is a fan and he reached out,” he says. “We worked on some original stuff and the shit came out so Illmatic. We were in the mad old school style studio with all the instruments with the wood panels and piano, horns and all that stuff. We wound up working on this one joint. It was me, Robert and Keyon Harrold—who actually played trumpet on the song and throughout the film—and we came up with an ill joint and [Sony Pictures Classics] loved it,” he said.
The Miles Ahead soundtrack is currently available on iTunes, Spotify and everywhere in between.
