We can thank Hideki Naganuma for putting Malcolm X in a Sonic game
polygon.comI think video game history will remember Hideki Naganuma for many reasons. Fans might lovingly bestow upon him the title of “Twitter weirdo.” Others — especially modern music producers — might cite him as an important influence in video game composition. That’s more than fair; the man is responsible for his fair share of video game bangers. Tracks like Jet Set Radio Future’s “The Concept of Love” — which stuffs warped vocal samples, bright electric guitar riffs, and rushing synthy drums — still turn heads when they come on the playlist.
But for me, I’ll always remember him as the video game composer who put a sample of a Malcolm X speech in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.
The song appears on the soundtrack for Sonic Rush, a 2D Sonic game Sega released in 2005 for the OG Nintendo DS. It’s called “Wrapped in Black” and it plays during the final boss fight with Doctor Eggman. The track opens up with rushing violins and operatic vocals that convey the evilness of Doctor Eggman, but soon a sharp repeating vocal sample cuts through it all. The sample repeats “Too black, too strong” a few times and then comes back later in the song.
The audio for “Too black, too strong” comes from a 1963 speech given by Malcolm X titled, “Message to the Grassroots.” Naturally, his talk had nothing to do with Sonic, and dealt with far more serious matters. In the talk, the Black revolutionary outlined his idea of a Black nationalist philosophy and criticized the Civil Rights Movement. In the sample quote, Malcolm X used the image of coffee and creamer to explain what happened to the movement. He said:
“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool.”
That a Sonic game sampled this feels like nothing short of a fever dream. The composer commented on it once back in 2014 when he said,
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