By 1976, Isaac Hayes was the king of soul music, an Academy Award winner for this theme song on the 1971 film Shaft, and one of the most recognizable voices in the world. He was also bankrupt. His label Stax Records faced financial hardships in the early 1970s and failed to pay Hayes royalties for the work he made. As a result, the man whose Hot Buttered Soul album sold more than one million copies had to take out loans with Union Planters Bank, which put him in a level of debt that forced him into bankruptcy once the albums stopped selling as much. Hayes had to give up rights to his music and royalties as part of the bankruptcy and didn't receive any compensation from the use of his work for decades until his death in 2008.
Since then, his son Isaac Hayes III has made it his mission to get his father's music rights back to the Hayes family. Over the years, he has watched Black culture become the epicenter of cool and the Black creators behind it not be properly compensated. Now, as a tech entrepreneur, he's unleashing a new social media platform aimed to make sure no one gets robbed the way his father did.
