Buckshot LeFonque - Breakfast @ Denny's (Uptown Version)

What this video is

Released in 1994, 'Breakfast @ Denny's (Uptown Version)' was the debut single from Buckshot LeFonque, Branford Marsalis's genre-defying jazz/hip-hop project co-produced with DJ Premier. The track was directly inspired by a real racial discrimination incident in which Denny's restaurant refused service to African-American Secret Service agents — a story that received national press attention in the early 1990s.…

Why it matters

A landmark artifact of the jazz-hip-hop fusion movement, this single and video represent the rare convergence of a celebrated jazz musician (Branford Marsalis), a defining hip-hop producer (DJ Premier), and a canonical filmmaker (Spike Lee) on a single politically charged project. It presaged the…

The director

Spike Lee (b. March 20, 1957, Atlanta, GA) is an American filmmaker, producer, and actor. He earned an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983. Major features include…