As the leader of The Impressions, R&B polymath Curtis Mayfield had been redefining the sound of Chicago soul for more than a decade by the time his debut, Curtis, arrived in 1970. It’s a landmark album from a transformative era in Black pop, released not long before Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. The seeds of Curtis were planted back in 1968, when Mayfield—in an effort to gain total creative freedom—launched his own record label, which he named Curtom. As the guiding force behind the company, Mayfield served as a songwriter and producer for such acts as the Five Stairsteps, Donny Hathaway, Baby Huey and Major Lance, all the while continuing to front The Impressions. But when the 1970s arrived, bringing with it the dawn of the singer-songwriter movement, Mayfield decided to go solo with Curtis, the album that would mark a dividing line in Mayfield’s life and music. Fully freed from the vocal and melodic template he’d established with The Impressions, Curtis allowed the singer to explore new musical and lyrical vistas. The album’s eight tracks are built on complex polyrhythms and dramatic guitar effects, and fed by the turbulence of the times: Mayfield had been inspired by the 1969 assassination of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and frustrated by what the singer saw as the engineered destruction of the urban ghetto due to drugs, violence and neglect. Nowhere is that sense of doom more powerful than on the album’s opening track, “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going To Go”. As a female voice reads from the Book of Revelations, Mayfield warns of the coming social and spiritual apocalypse that will spare no one (despite the song's intensity, it became an R&B hit). But that's just one of several striking tracks on Curtis, which also includes “The Other Side of Town”—a study of social segregation—and the dramatic “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue”, which examines inter-Black relations: “Shall we commit our own genocide/Before you check out your mind?” Mayfield asks at one point. Even as his message became more strident and focused, Mayfield moved the music in manifold directions, showcasing his total mastery—not just of soul, gospel and jazz, but of funk and psychedelia as well. Curtis also gets personal at times. Mayfield delivers a halting love song with “The Makings Of You”, celebrates Nubian beauty on “Miss Black America” and documents domestic alienation with “Give It Up”. The record’s largely foreboding feeling is countered by the epic “Move On Up”, a nearly nine-minute exploration of righteous optimism, which serves as the album’s emotional centrepiece. Curtis would kick off a run of remarkable solo LPs from Mayfield, which included 1971’s and Roots, and which would culminate with his landmark soundtrack to the 1972 Blaxploitation classic Superfly.