Ebert, Roger. "New Jack City". Chicago Sun-Times Online and RogerEbert.com. 1 May 1991. .

This Roger Ebert review of Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City (1991) shows how far black urban cinema has come in the 20 years since his father Melvin’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). In contrast to the heroic drug dealers of the early blaxploitation era (i.e. Priest in Superfly), Ebert acknowledges that Wesley Snipes’ character of Nino, a ruthless head of a cocaine business, does not lead the seductive lifestyle of his cinematic drug dealing predecessors. He calls the film a “character study of a bad man running an evil business…written and directed with concern – apparently after a lot of research and inside information.” The urgency in this movie reflects that of Sweetback’s energetic frenzy, albeit with a different message and different consequences. Like his father, Mario does not play it safe, “taking chances to give his film an authentic and gritty feel.” Ultimately, Ebert summarizes the film as a “painful but true portrait of the impact of drugs on this segment of the black community.” He says the excitement of portraying a drug dealer on screen makes it difficult to make an antidrug movie, but this movie pulls it off.

This review is very important to understand the timeline, context, and ultimate consequences of Hollywood’s blaxploitation movement, started by the independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. The Hollywood films that followed, like 1971's Superfly and Shaft, portrayed a black urban fantasy. In the case of Superfly, it is a heroic cocaine dealer who ends up using his “ghetto smarts” to outsmart “the Man” while confiding his despair in accepting that the only way for him to “make it” is to sell coke. As his partner says, “it’s the hand ‘the Man’ dealt us.” In the case of Shaft, there is the idea of an in-your-face sexual, cocky, hip black private detective that is embraced by white culture as the new black "answer." Comical to white viewers but dangerously desireable to black viewers. Both films – and the blaxploitation genre in general – exploit the black fantasy that with the “ghetto smarts” and current culture of drug dealing and other criminal activity at their disposal, they can outsmart and ultimately defeat “the Man.” Sweetback helped create and perpetuate this myth with a black folk hero that kills two cops who were beating up a young Black Panther that eventually emerges victorious when he escapes to Mexico. Are we supposed to cheer? The exploitation of this black fantasy – blaxploitation – has created this myth that ultimately holds down black urban culture. When violence against authority and drug dealing are glorified with a sense of pride, the actual impact on the community takes a back seat to the fantasy of the ghetto revolution. Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City ironically shows the damage on the black community from his father’s ghetto lifestyle glorification. It shows how the liberating feeling of making a blaxploitation film paradoxically imprisoned millions of urban youths in a fantasy that has no bearing or practical use in the real world.