Each year on May 19, we pause to reflect on and honor the life and legacy of Malcolm X, an iconic and fearless messenger for Black empowerment, self-determination, and human rights. His life, which he lived with transparency, passion, courage and brilliance continues to serve as both inspiration and blueprint. While Malcolm has been examined through social, political, and philosophical lenses since his passing in 1965, artists have long honored his legacy translating his essence into sound.
I first became enamored with Malcolm in 1988, when he had already been gone 23 years. But I had the great fortune of encountering him through two extraordinary channels: my mother's firsthand memories of seeing Malcolm speak in Harlem, and the fearless journalism of Gil Noble, whose landmark television series Like It Is was required viewing in our home every Sunday afternoon. Noble — himself a maverick and fearless a truth-teller — devoted hours of airtime to Malcolm's life and legacy at a time when most of mainstream media still regarded him with some level of contempt. Through him, Malcolm came alive for me.
As a Xennial New Yorker, I watched Malcolm X become a hero for the hip-hop generation in real time. Over the years, and even now, rappers and singers have replicated, re-imagined, and paid homage to him in their own art. KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions reenacted the now-iconic Gordon Parks photograph of Malcolm peering out of a window, rifle in hand. The Roots reproduced Malcolm's 1944 mugshot on the cover of The Tipping Point. Jeezy, on Trap or Die 2, posed in Malcolm's signature "deep thinking" stance — index finger to the temple, eyes fixed. Acclaimed vocalist Bilal's Airtight's Revenge cover revisits the rifle photograph but replaces the weapon with a vintage standing microphone — a substitution that says everything about the power of art as resistance. GQ named Malcolm among the 50 Most Stylish Men of the Past 50 Years in 2007, and rapper T.I.'s 2009 VIBE magazine cover offered its own clear tribute to Malcolm's singular, uncompromising fashion sense.
But before hip-hop claimed him, the jazz community had done so with a distinctive level of intention.
Malcolm's relationship with jazz was deep, personal, and well-documented. As a young man in Boston, he worked as a shoeshine boy and later a waiter at the Roseland State Ballroom — a legendary venue where the great orchestras of the era played and where he mingled with musicians like Duke Ellington and Count Basie, whose art was shaping the soul of Black America. He knew Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. He admired Dakota Staton. He moved through the jazz world with a familiarity that would stay with him long after he left those ballroom floors in Boston.
His personal papers and letters reveal a man who never lost his love for jazz. He wrote with genuine feeling about Thelonious Monk, whose uncompromising genius must have spoken to something deep in Malcolm's own spirit. And he spoke explicitly and warmly of Ahmed Abdul-Malik — the jazz bassist who, like Malcolm, had embraced Islam, and whose music bridged the African American and Arab musical worlds.
When musicians sought to honor Malcolm after his assassination in February 1965, so many of them were jazz artists — people who had known him, loved him, or been transformed by his journey. The tributes poured in quickly and they continue to this day.
In honor of his 101st birthday, we're sharing a special editorial spotlight: 9 songs dedicated to Malcolm X. From early experimental hip-hop sampling to powerful jazz compositions and global tributes, these tracks reflect how deeply his influence resonates across genres, eras, and geography.
“No Sell Out” (1984)
Malcolm X & Keith LeBlanc
Beginning in the late 1980s, there was a resurgence of interest in the life, philosophies, and legacy of Malcolm X, especially within hip hop music. Since his passing, numerous rappers have quoted or sampled Malcolm X in their songs, including Public Enemy, Gang Starr, and Kendrick Lamar.
One of the earliest examples of sampling — of both Malcolm X, and in hip hop as a whole — is “No Sell Out,” produced by the late drummer and producer Keith LeBlanc. LeBlanc also played drums on several pioneering hip hop recordings, including “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and recordings by The Sugarhill Gang.
Taking snippets from various speeches given by Malcolm X recorded in the early 1960s, LeBlanc strategically places them over his funk-hip hop synthesizers.
Released on Tommy Boy Records in 1983, “No Sell Out” remains a landmark early hip hop track. The project was personally approved by Dr. Betty Shabazz, with the Malcolm X estate receiving 50 percent of the proceeds. Published by Marshall Chess, the recording remains an historic piece of hip hop history.
“Malcolm’s Gone” (1969)
Leon Thomas
Jazz vocalist Leon Thomas first made his mark through his work with Pharoah Sanders, specifically on Sanders’s 1969 album The Creator Has A Master Plan and on the song “Prince of Peace” from Sanders’s album Izipho Zam (My Gifts). Thomas and Sanders wrote “Malcolm’s Gone” for Thomas’s debut album as a leader, which featured James Spaulding, Cecil McBee, Richard Davis, Lonnie Liston Smith, Richard Landrum and Roy Haynes.
The almost 9-minute pensive piece opens with Thomas speaking the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, the name Malcolm X took after making the Hajj pilgrimage in April of 1964. Sanders’s begins to play sorrow-filled, wailing lines over a beautiful flurry of flute lines, percussion and crashes from the band. Thomas then comes in with a verse that encapsulates the sentiments of so many people left in the wake of Malcolm’s assassination to put meaning to how he could be taken so tragically.
I know he’s gone
But he’s not forgotten
I know he died just to set men free.
Yes, Malcolm’s gone
But he’s not forgotten
He died to save me
Gave me my dignity
One of the most beautiful representations of the burgeoning spiritual jazz movement that deserves much more attention.
“Malcolm’s Theme” (2015)
Kamasi Washington
In 2015, Kamasi Washington released The Epic, a modern spiritual jazz suite of sweeping, orchestral ambition. "Malcolm's Theme" arrives as the penultimate piece on the sprawling 3-disc project. With music composed by Terence Blanchard, and arranged and produced by Washington, the track features vocalists Patrice Quinn and Dwight Trible, who extraordinarily they take the words Ossie Davis wrote for Malcolm's eulogy and lift them into melody. Over eight unrushed minutes, the song moves through grief, reverence, and elation. It is a modern testament to the deep, abiding affection this generation holds for Malcolm as a living presence and enduring hero.
The Malcolm X Jazz Suite (1993)
Terence Blanchard
On the subject of Terence Blanchard, he composed not only a song but an entire soundtrack in Malcolm’s honor. In 1992, acclaimed film director Spike Lee took on the almost unbelievable task of bringing a Malcolm X biopic to the big screen. He brought in his musical collaborator Blanchard, who by that point had worked on School Daze, and Mo' Better Blues, but Malcolm X would mark the first time Blanchard scored an entire Spike Lee film on his own. The result was an expansive, melodic chronicle that matched the sweep and gravity of its subject: a score that moves through decades of Black American life — from the ballrooms of the 1940s to the mosques and the Harlem neighborhood Malcolm called home in the early '60s. It remains one of the great film soundtracks of the 20th century.
“Malcolm X” (1967)
Miriam Makeba
Malcolm X was shaped by Pan-Africanism long before he became the figure the world would come to know. His parents were devoted followers of Marcus Garvey, both prominent organizers within his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). That worldview, rooted in Black self-determination and global solidarity, stayed with Malcolm throughout his life. He made at least four trips to Africa, moving through the continent with the ease of a man who felt at home there, spending time with people like Shirley DuBois and Maya Angelou. By the final years of his life, he had fully committed himself to internationalizing the plight of African Americans, taking their cause before the United Nations, building bridges with African heads of state, and framing Black liberation as a human rights struggle with global stakes. For this reason, Malcolm is one of the most beloved figures across the African continent and its diaspora.
It is fitting, then, that one of the most moving tributes to him came from South Africa. Singer, composer, actress, activist, exile, and the woman the world called “Mama Africa,” Miriam Makeba recorded "Malcolm X" in 1965, just after his assassination, while she herself had been driven from her homeland by apartheid, and performed on stages across the globe. While in the United States, Makeba had been deeply influenced by the Pan-Africanist movement, and the example of Malcolm X. The song is a joyful celebration that still carries a palpable grief. Her chorus, to use Malcolm’s phrase, “makes it plain.”:
“Do you remember Malcolm? Don't you know he was a great man.”
“Malcolm, Malcolm – Semper Malcolm” (1965)
Archie Shepp
Saxophonist Archie Shepp recorded this song just days after Malcolm's assassination. Shepp performs a poem that opens the song, which concludes, “Malcolm... Dear God... Malcolm,” before moving on to an emotional solo and weeping bass lines from David Izenzon. It would be released the following year on Shepp's landmark Fire Music album on the Impulse! Records label. The Latin “Semper” means “always.” This sentiment manifests in the ways Malcolms legacy continues to be increasingly present and inspiring.
“Mr. X” (1964)
Max Roach Plus Four
Max Roach was one of jazz's most committed artist-activists, and a man who knew Malcolm X personally. Recorded in September 1956, "Mr. X" predates Malcolm's rise to national prominence, but in the context of Roach's life and politics, it’s easy to think of Malcolm in the context of this song. By 1956, Malcolm was chief minister of Harlem's Temple No. 7. And same year that Malcolm would meet his future wife, Dr. Betty Shabazz.
Max’s assembled a formidable group for this album, including Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins, Ray Bryant, and George Morrow. The recording was also Roach's first following the devastating loss of Richie Powell and his musical soul mate Clifford Brown. Whether "Mr. X" was a nod to the man Roach admired, is something I can’t confirm, but I don’t believe it needs to be, when we consider in retrospect the deep admiration and respect held between two men who traversed within each other’s orbits with a common, central mission of black liberation.
The Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute in Music) (1968)
Philip Cohran & The Artistic Heritage Ensemble
The founding member of the AACM, Philip Cohran also directed the Affro-Arts Theater in Chicago, a vital center of Black cultural life during the outset of the Black Arts Movement. On February 25, 1968, he recorded the extraordinary live tribute, The Malcolm X Memorial, a four-movement suite, each section named for a chapter of Malcolm's life: "Malcolm Little," "Detroit Red," "Malcolm X," and "El Hajj Malik El Shabazz." Moving through avant-jazz, blues, and free-bop improvisation, the ensemble traces a full arc of Malcolm’s life. Originally released on Cohran's own Zulu label, original copies are now rare collector's items from one of jazz's great unsung heroes.
“Malcolm X” (1965)
Hal Singer
Saxophonist and bandleader Hal Singer was among the many American jazz musicians who had made Paris their home in the 1960s. Before that, Singer – a Tulsa massacre survivor – was deeply affected by the systemic racism of America. Finding solace in France, his 1969 album Paris Soul Food, paid tribute to Malcolm X. Recorded with Robin Hemingway and Cameroonian legend Manu Dibango (saxophone, organ, arrangements) the album went on to win a French Record Academy award for best international LP.