Barry Michael Cooper dead at 66: Writer of New Jack City, Sugar Hill and Above The Rim passes away

Hollywood writer and producer Barry Michael Cooper, who wrote a string of beloved 1990s movies, has died in Baltimore at the age of 66.

Cooper helped pen the screenplay of the iconic 1991 crime film New Jack City, starring Wesley Snipes as a drug lord opposite Ice-T as the detective on his case.

He also wrote the 1994 film Above The Rim, a basketball drama led by Tupac Shakur and based on a story by Jennifer Lopez' longtime manager Benny Medina.

More recently, he served as a producer on Spike Lee's sitcom She's Gotta Have It, based on Lee's 1986 feature debut of the same name. 

Just five days before his death, Cooper had written an Instagram post marking Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday by quoting the title of the civil rights activist's famed 1955 sermon Am I My Brother's Keeper?.

The Maryland Chief Medical Examiner's Office has confirmed Cooper died this Tuesday, according to a report in TMZ. A cause of death was not stated. 

Cooper was born and raised in Harlem, which also served as the setting of his three most famous screenplays, all produced in the 1990s.

The trio was comprised of New Jack City, Above The Rim and the 1994 movie Sugar Hill, starring Wesley Snipes, Michael Wright and Abe Vigoda.

All three movies are occasionally collectively known as the Harlem Trilogy and have been credited with bringing light to the experience of New York's black community.

Perhaps the most famous feature film he worked on was New Jack City, directed by Mario Van Peebles from a screenplay by Cooper and Thomas Lee Wright.

In the film, Ice-T's detective character goes undercover and infiltrates a drug gang run by the Wesley Snipes character in the midst of the crack epidemic.

With a formidable cast including Allen Payne, Chris Rock, Judd Nelson and Bill Cobbs, the film emerged as a critical and financial success.

The movie is hailed for kicking off what is sometimes called the New Jack Cinema movement, a 1990s wave of gritty, independent black movies.

Its soundtrack was particularly memorable as an exponent of the 'new jack swing' strain of R&B, with songs including I'm Dreaming by Christopher Williams and I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd.