Superfly

Superfly was the second single from the album, after Freddie's Dead. It reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 5 on the Best Selling Soul Singles chart, and it plays over the film's closing credits. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame chose it as one of the 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Alexis Petridis of the Guardian called the song the negative image of Isaac Hayes's Shaft theme. Where Hayes praised his film's hero, Mayfield showed Youngblood Priest filled with weakness. Pitchfork's Mychal Denzel Smith heard a clear attempt at the boisterous anthem Hayes had provided for Shaft the year before, though the lyric stays with hustling, surviving and pain, ending on the falsetto line about trying to get over. Stevie Chick of the Guardian quoted Mayfield saying there were enough preachers in the world and that he wanted to say these things without making a listener feel preached at.

Samples

The bassline, played by Joseph Scott, and the rototom percussion break from the introduction, played by Master Henry Gibson, have been sampled many times: by the Beastie Boys on Egg Man in 1989, by the Notorious B.I.G. on Intro in 1994, by Nelly on Tilt Ya Head Back in 2004, and by Outkast on Return of the 'G' in 1998. Mayfield sampled it himself in Superfly 1990, a duet with Ice-T for the film The Return of Superfly.