When composer Daniel Pemberton was tasked with putting together the soundtrack for Netflix's film about the Paralympics he enlisted rappers Georgetragic, Toni Hickman, and Keith Jones to create the perfect theme song.
For Leroy Moore, Jr., the Paralympic Games are a lot like a cypher — and he would know, given that he’s both a former Paralympian and a hip-hop poet and activist living with cerebral palsy. In 1988, Moore, then a 20-year-old cyclist sporting a mohawk, competed in the Paralympics in Seoul; this was a little over a decade before he co-founded Krip-Hop Nation, a movement that celebrates and advocates for musicians, writers, rappers and artists with disabilities. The adrenaline surging before a rap battle is akin to the intensity that brews before competition, and he was reminded of that when he watched "Rising Phoenix," Netflix’s 2020 documentary that follows a group of Paralympians as they prepare to compete for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.
“It’s about the struggle and making a way out of no way,” Moore says of the parallels between hip-hop and the Paralympics. “When you go into that space where the event is, and you’re about to race, it’s like, it’s no bullshit, you know? It’s like, ‘All right, we’re here.’ When that cypher hits, it’s all serious.”
It made perfect sense to him, then, when the film's music team found the voices it was looking for in Krip-Hop Nation. Ironically, Daniel Pemberton, the prolific composer ("Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," "Birds of Prey," etc.) who crafted the score of "Rising Phoenix," and Gary Welch, the film’s music supervisor, didn’t know that Moore had competed in the Paralympics himself when they reached out to him for help. They did know that he was the first call they needed to make, as "Rising Phoenix" required a song that reflected the heart of the documentary and the global community it spotlights. At one point in the film, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex — who launched the Invictus Games, a similar competition for injured veterans, in 2014 — speaks on the astounding physical and mental challenges Paralympic athletes must face in order to compete, especially when compared to the arduous journey of a non-disabled Olympian. The Rising Phoenix team felt similarly about their soundtrack, and they reached out to Moore in the hope that he could connect them to rappers who could relate to what they saw on screen.
Daniel Pemberton
“One of the first things I thought was that we have to have disabled artists behind the camera as well as in front of it — and that had to apply to the score as well,” says Pemberton. “Early on, we talked about a song for the film, and tried to get a big name [artist] because that’s what gives the exposure, annoyingly. But that just felt wrong. That’s not what this film is about. What the Paralympics shows is, if you see people who have a disability doing amazing things, it totally changes your perception of them. I was hoping we could do the same thing with art.”
Soon, Pemberton was combing through submissions curated by Moore, and he was particularly moved by the self-produced work of Bay Area rapper Georgetragic (a.k.a. George Doman), Houston MC Toni Hickman, and Keith Jones, the Boston-based rapper/activist and Krip-Hop Nation’s co-founder.
“All of three of them have that talent [for] storytelling that can pull people in,” says Moore of the “Rising Phoenix” trio. “A lot of hip-hop artists just use words with intention, but there’s no story behind it: you’ve got my attention, but there’s nothing that’s going to keep me there. All of these are great storytelling writers.”
Pemberton — who sought out British Paraorchestra instrumentalists to meld elements of classical, rock, and hip-hop for the score — took the rappers’ vocal takes and laid them over the theme that crashes and roars throughout the film. The resulting track, “Rising Phoenix,” plays in the final moments of the documentary, and begins with Doman, who unspools his life story and the adversity he’s met while living with cerebral palsy from the second the beat drops: "They wanna label me a cripple, that’s the way it seems / Take away my right to pursue a normal life and lead." It ends with Jones, whose verse was also informed by his own experiences with cerebral palsy.
“I was looking at the stories and saying, ‘Yo, this is what life is,” Jones says of the impact "Rising Phoenix" had on his contribution. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, I can’t use my legs, I can’t do this.’ It’s always about finding the strength in yourself to pursue what you love. It was amazing to me how that connected.”
Jones describes “Rising Phoenix” as “a global anthem that’s about nothing but the power of the human spirit,” and both Doman and Hickman felt similarly when they were recording their parts in their at-home studios.
“It’s funny — all three of us were on the same exact mission, and we never even met,” says Doman of Hickman and Jones. “We’ve been on the same path and rap about the same things, and it was great to see that, finally — that there are people who feel what I feel, and are rapping about what I’m feeling right now. Oftentimes, when I collaborate with other people, they don’t have disabilities. They don’t get where I’m coming from when I mention my disability, which I try to avoid rapping about, because I was told it wasn’t too commercial. But this song got picked up by Netflix.” He laughs. “How commercial do you want to get?”
For Doman, “Rising Phoenix” isn’t just a break, but the break — and an experience he’s been hoping for since he first dreamed of making music for a living. He’s found kinship and support in Krip-Hop Nation, but Doman has encountered more locked doors than open ones in the music industry. What struck Doman about “Rising Phoenix” was how Pemberton wanted to highlight their experiences instead of passing them over in favor of the promotional benefit of putting a big-name rapper on the track.
“I’m glad that this is the one time that they let us embrace our power and our pain and not hide it,” he says. What Daniel and Gary did, they were like, ‘This movie is about the community, let’s reach out to the actual community. We need to be more authentic.’”
Hickman was deeply moved by "Rising Phoenix" and its inclusive message, one that brought her to tears when she first watched the film and wrote the entrancing chorus that gives voice to its defiant spirit (“I’m a Rising Phoenix/I rise above you”).
“I had this ‘I’ll be damned’ attitude,” she says of her approach. “That’s what I wanted to bring to the song: no matter what’s going on, I’m amazing, and you’re going to know it.” Before she suffered two brain aneurysms and a stroke that paralyzed her right side, Hickman was on the roster of Houston’s Suave House records, and has been performing professionally since the ‘90s — but “Rising Phoenix” broke new, profound ground.
“I’ve been on gold and platinum albums, but I’ve never done anything like this before, ever in my life, because it means something,” she says of “Rising Phoenix.” “It has the power to change people’s lives. It’s almost like a ‘We are the World’ song for people with disabilities. I’ve done more independent [work] that really helps the world than I ever did when I was signed. What’s the difference? If we’re here to use our purpose and make a change, then that is what we’re here for, and there’s no energy that can stop that.”
Hickman, Doman, and Jones are hopeful that “Rising Phoenix” will shift awareness regarding musicians with disabilities and the barriers that prevent them from reaching commercial success. All three characterize both the work of Krip-Hop Nation and their collaboration with Pemberton as experiences all too rare, in that “Rising Phoenix” wasn’t just a song written and produced with good intentions, but an act of allyship.
“For Daniel and [the directors and producers] to say ‘No, we want this movie, this entire process,’ is groundbreaking — it’s not done that much, if at all,” says Jones. “The work can be done and it can be incredible, but if you shut yourself up because you think it’s too hard to make an accommodation — to have the lyrics you want your vocalist to sing written in Braille, or print out larger notes [on sheet music] — then you’re not trying to be an artist, but an ableist that’s hiding behind art. That’s why we keep shouting Daniel out: You get it. Thank you for getting it. It would be nice for this to jump off, and then we don’t have to fight just to even get into the door. The fact that we even got to the point where Daniel could hear us was an accomplishment unto itself. To have disability involved in terms of the orchestra, the rappers and all that, that meant you understood, and that you get it — particularly if you’re doing a project based on disability.”
"Rising Phoenix" has been praised by critics, but was largely overshadowed by another Netflix release. ("Rising Phoenix" came out a week before the controversial "Cuties," and several comments on the “Rising Phoenix” lyric video are criticisms for the other movie.) Pemberton, in particular, doesn’t want the artists he worked with to be overlooked for their contributions to its theme song.
“The first time I played it for the directors over Zoom, it was great, and they started crying,” he says. “One of them wears glasses; he had to take his glasses off. He just found the whole thing so moving. Since then, the response to the track has been kind of amazing from the disabled community, but the thing that I’ve found very frustrating is it’s just stayed there.”
Doman can relate. “There were these kids, young adults on Instagram, who contacted me: ‘I’m so glad this movie came out, I have a disability too, I relate to it’ — you know how great that felt?” he says. “The feeling I’m feeling, that was what hip-hop was supposed to be. We are holding that flag up for hip-hop right now, and they’re not even noticing us. That was what hip-hop was created for: what we’re doing is breaking boundaries, and we’re being ignored. Why is Krip-Hop being ignored, in the full spectrum of things, when we’re the ones keeping it authentic?”
Regardless of whether or not the industry will catch up with Krip-Hop Nation and the important work Moore, Jones, and their colleagues are doing, they will continue to do the work, and to celebrate each other — and “Rising Phoenix” — for the win it is.
“We definitely set the mark,” says Hickman of “Rising Phoenix.” “They may just dismiss it because they see something that is not ‘perfect’ in their eyes. But that song is beyond perfect, and I hope that it’s going to open more peoples’ eyes. People with disabilities are talented — not just people who are blind, but have cerebral palsy, or have been through aneurysms, people who are deaf rappers. No matter what, they can be amazing.”