Netflix has been on a roll lately with the great amount of prominent releases and originals. Now, they just raised the bar with the release of their newly added black western film The Harder They Fall. V iewers might assume the movie is an imaginary tale, one of several cases of Hollywood re-casting historical periods and events with more ethnic minority characters than there were in reality. Except in this case, the opposite is true. A large number of cowboys were black, and yet traditionally the film industry has cast white men in the leading parts of Westerns, with black actors generally in different roles. To assist with the movie’s rollout, The Harder They Fall soundtrack has also surfaced and it fits the film quite well.

We all knew the soundtrack was going to be something great, but it’s even better knowing that Jay-Z had a hand in the curation. Not only that, Hov also serves as co-producer of the film. Director Jeymes Samuel recently spoke about Hov’s influence on the film and praised him for being an underrated cinephile. “Me and Hov are always cooking music. But most of the stuff we go back and forth on is film,” Samuel recently told GQ. “And it has always been that way. We have big debates over Scarface. I go, ‘wasn’t the nicest guy.’ But Jay-Z and James Lassiter will break it down like ‘Jeymes, he was cool. He told guys, no women, no kids.’ Jay is the proper cinephile. [raps the first line to Jay-Z’s ‘Heart of the City’] ‘First the Fat Boys break up, now everyday I wake up…’ That comes from Boomerang, Chris Rock in the mailroom. It’s a thing that has run through his entire career, film.”

With Jay-Z, Conway The Machine, Jadakiss, Lauryn Hill, Koffee, and more featured for the project, the soundtrack is just as nice as the movie is! Check it out now.