How Spike Lee’s Musical Instincts Helped Shape His New Film ‘Highest 2 Lowest’

Spike Lee’s brilliance as a movie director has never been in question. For decades, moviegoers have come to appreciate his eye for artsy, captivating visuals, such as the opening montage of his latest film, Highest 2 Lowest, which begins with the magnificence of a Brooklyn morning. Lee’s sense for music direction is also inspired. He chose to score the scene with singer Norm Lewis’ cover of Gordon MacRae’s “Oh What A Beautiful Mornin’,” from the 1955 film Oklahoma. Lee says he chose the song to intentionally juxtapose pastoral lyrics, such as “All the cattle are standin’ like statues,” with New York’s trove of sprawling bridges and towering buildings. As he tells me over the phone, his knack for unconventional song choices is nothing new.  

“People thought I was crazy when He Got Game paired the great American composer from Brooklyn, Aaron Copeland, with Public Enemy, “ he reflects. ”That shit worked.” And those instincts are apparent throughout Highest 2 Lowest, a heavily musical film where Spike tasked artists A$AP Rocky, Aiyana Lee, and Jensen McRae (who all appear in the film) to craft songs for the film that stars Denzel Washington as disillusioned record executive David King. But their contributions to the film, which also cast uptown New York artists Princess Nokia and Ice Spice, aren’t mere soundtrack addenda attached in postproduction: McRae’s original “King David” was written for a specific scene, Aiyana Lee’s heartrending title track was crafted to encapsulate the movie’s denouement, while A$AP Rocky offered two songs, “Both Eyes Closed,” and “Trunks.” Rocky’s latter track is a key plot point (no spoilers), exemplifying how interwoven Lee’s musical choices were with the Highest 2 Lowest script.  

Lee says that even though there are elements of A$AP Rocky in both of his songs (calling himself “a purty guy” on “Trunks”, and pensive, cloudy vibes on “Both Eyes Closed”), they were recorded from the perspective of Young Felon, the antagonistic rapper that the Harlem native portrays. Lee was hands-on with the songs crafted by Aiyana Lee and McRae, whom he calls “great new talents” that he found on Instagram (both women say it took them a while to realize he was in their direct message requests).  

Aiyana Lee fed the elder Lee’s need for a “gangbuster” of a song at the end of the movie. The director says he was looking for a moment akin to Jennifer Hudson’s iconic Dreamgirls rendition of “You’re Gonna Love Me” and sought out Aiyana for the role. Aiyana says that Spike jokingly introduced himself via DM by asking, “Are we cousins?” referring to their shared last name. After receiving thematic direction from Spike, she recorded multiple songs for about a week (“I have a folder full of Spike Lee joints,” she says), conferring with him before she finally reached a version that worked for the film. 

Aiyana sings the eponymous track in front of King at the end of the movie. And while many movies overdub singing scenes with a studio version of a song, what viewers hear in Highest 2 Lowest is her on-set recording. Adorned with an acting mic, she sang the song “over 20 times” during what she calls a “surreal experience” in front of Washington. Aiyana says, “I think it brought so much raw dimension and storytelling to it because it wasn’t perfect, but it was emotional, which I think is more important than perfection.” Spike notes that he had composer Howard Drossin, who scored the film, to add instrumentation as Aiyana sings to symbolize King imagining how to produce for her in real time.  

Similarly, Spike asked McRae to craft “King David,” a folk song that she performs for King in the film. She says that she first spoke with Lee while crafting her I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! album. After getting Lee’s requests on the direction of the song, she wrote two versions of the song in 30 minutes. “Because I went to music school, I’m very good with an assignment,” she says via Zoom. “I feel like my creativity is aided by having constraints and limitations, so it flowed out very quickly.” She filmed her scene during a break from a music tour, filming “five or six” takes of her singing live in King’s record label office. “I was the most nervous I’ve ever been in my entire life,” she says of the scene, where she plays a folk singer seeking to be signed to King’s Stackin’ Hits Records. 

“I felt connected to the idea of scrapping and clawing to get 60 seconds of attention from someone who might help me,” she says of her relation to the character. “It definitely was not a stretch for me to imagine being a person who was desperate for the approval and attention of someone with more power than me.” Of McRae, Lee laughingly says, “I needed a black Joni Mitchell.”

Both women recorded studio versions of their songs with Drossin, who has previously worked with Lee on BlacKkKlansman, Chi-Raq, and Inside Man. Aiyana recorded the title track and “Prisencolin (Americano Joint),” her take on Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” that plays during the end credits. And McRae’s “King David” was recorded with the Fergus McReadie trio, a Scottish jazz band whom Lee stumbled upon and took an impromptu redeye flight (with Drossin) to see at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival. Spike was so impressed that he had the band work with Drossin to score various parts of the film, including a climactic scene backdropped by their song, “We Got This (Stony Gate 2).“ 

Drossin initially came onto the project to work with Aiyana Lee on the movie’s title track, before Lee asked him to score the entire film. He says that he crafted the lush, orchestral score to mirror the popular sound of the 1970s, the time period when the fictional David King first began shaping his musical tastes. Piano and guitar-driven compositions were chosen for David’s score because, as Drossin says, “it’s a deeply expressive instrument that has so much range.” The score’s buoyant moments reflect King’s flamboyance and luxurious lifestyle, while “cold” and “sparse” piano solos symbolize moments of isolated angst. Drossin adds that David’s driver, Paul Christopher, played by Jeffrey Wright, has a sad score to reflect his struggle in the film, while the NYPD has a grand score during scenes where a cadre of cars swarm King’s sprawling condo. 

For Lee, the process with Drossin is no different than working with his late father, jazz musician Bill Lee, or frequent collaborator Terrence Blanchard. “It’s a coming together of: How are we to help support the film for the score?” Spike says. “The cinematography is in service to the film. The production design is in service to the film [as well as] the editing. And I include music in that.” 

Spike picked songs from soul greats like James Brown and McFadden & Whitehead for the film independently, but the score was a collaborative effort. Drossin says the two initially held a “spotting” session, where they watched a cut of the film and Lee told him where he wanted to add music. “Spike will whisper to me, ‘I want this to be lush. I want this to be really big here.’ Or. ‘I want this to be very percussive here. Spike is very detailed and clear about what he wants in his films.” Drossin says they finalized the score “very, very quickly,” a testament to their working relationship. 

“There’s no one like Spike, in a lot of ways,” Drossin says. “Spike has great musical instincts, and he trusts his instincts. And I trust him because every comment he’s ever made and everything that I’ve done with him has made me better.” Throughout the film, some moments of dialogue occur with a rousing score, while others don’t. When I ask Lee the logic behind scoring the movie’s conversations, he reflects the musical inclinations Drossin mentioned: “I mean…really, my brother, I’ve been doing [feature films] since 1986. I just have a feel for when we need music and when we don’t.”