Barry Michael Cooper, a pioneering journalist and screenwriter, died on Tuesday, Jan. 21, in Baltimore, Md., at 66.

The Harlem journalist who coined the phrase “New Jack Swing” while writing a profile passed away in Maryland. There is no discussion of 1990s-era Black movies without films written by Barry Michael Cooper,

The Village Voice obituary of writer Barry Michael Cooper, dead at age 66, notes the powerful stories he wrote for the paper in the 1980s.

Barry Michael Cooper, the screenwriter behind "New Jack City" and pioneering investigative journalist, died Tuesday in Baltimore at age 66.