The Saxophones Are Getting Louder — And ‘Boyz n the Hood’ Composer Stanley Clarke Can’t Get Enough of the Viral Trend He Helped Create
Categoria: Musica
The Grammy-winning jazz bassist and Emmy-nominated composer also reflects on scoring Michael Jackson's "Remember the Time" music video.
Por Billboard | 03/09/2026
If “Nothing Beats a Jet2 Holiday” reigned as last summer’s most viral sound, this year’s crown belongs to Grammy-winning bassist/composer Stanley Clarke and Grammy-winning saxophonist Kirk Whalum, the two principals behind the foreboding saxophone riff that’s completely taken over social media in 2026. Related Raphael Saadiq Talks ‘Sinners,’ ‘Cowboy Carter’ and Being ‘Chosen to Raise the Bar’ Moses Sumney Talks Spinning Music Out of Vengeance for His ‘Is God Is’ Score, Teases New Album: ‘The Most Ambitious Work I’ve Ever Made’ Morgan Freeman Enters 2027 Grammys Race With Time-Traveling ‘Symphonic Blues Experience’ Album: ‘The Blues Was the First Time America Heard Itself’ From clips of babies trying matcha for the first time to tricky ferry disembarkation and family members wiping out while walking down a flight of stairs, Whalum’s saxophone riff has been remarkably omnipresent this year. One TikTok audio containing the riff boasts over 2.4 million posts on TikTok, with a sped-up version of the sound playing in an additional 5.1 million clips. Over on Instagram, just one version of the “Saxophones Getting Louder” sound can be heard in over 111,000 reels. The riff, which comes from a pivotal scene (when Ricky, Morris Chestnut’s character, is shot and killed) in 1991’s Boyz n the Hood, has sparked a cultural revival for the seminal film, with Chestnut himself sharing an AI-assisted video riffing off the meme earlier this year (March 28). “I wasn’t a big Instagram watcher, but I watch it now,” Clarke tells Billboard . “I swear, during the day, I hear the thing at least four times. And weird stuff — like, stuff that don’t even have to do with the hood! But it’s fun; it’s really nice to have it out there.” Long before he joined the late John Singleton’s feature directorial debut, the now-75-year-old Clarke was a Grammy-winning jazz bassist and one of the founding members of Return to Forever, a pioneering jazz fusion band led by the late Chick Corea. A pivotal force in the evolution of bass guitar as a prominent jazz instrument, Clarke transitioned into composing in the mid-80s, earning a 1988 Daytime Emmy nomination for the score he crafted for an episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. That foray into television quickly gave way to an impressive film composing career, which includes classic Black films like The Five Heartbeats (1991), What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993), Poetic Justice (1993), B*A*P*S (1997), The Best Man (1999), Roll Bounce (2005) and Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016). Though Clarke was a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship — and also has his own electric bass on permanent display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture — this Boyz n the Hood saxophone riff has thrust him into the center of contemporary pop culture. Inspired by a recent message from Grammy-winning cross-genre savant Thundercat, Clarke, alongside a few ot