"Freddie's Dead" (Curtis Mayfield)

Even if you've never seen the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly, it's impossible to hear the gangsta lean congas, jazz flute, and rumbling bass of "Freddie's Dead" and not think of tricked out Cadillacs and 70s urban decay.
If you have seen the movie, you know the song is about the character "Fat Freddie," one of the few characters who dies in the film.  Freddie is kind of a pushover and screwup.  His main function in the plot is that he rats out the protagonist, "Youngblood Priest" (a.k.a. Superfly), to shady narcotics agents to save his own skin, only to be hit by a car as he attempts to flee the police precinct.
Being that Freddie is a relatively minor (and somewhat irritating) character, it always surprised me that Curtis Mayfield wrote what's essentially the movie's theme song about the guy.  But then I read this quote from Mayfield in the liner notes of the 1999 re-issue of the Super Fly soundtrack: "I had such a feeling for this character who wasn't really a bad man.  He just got caught up with the wrong people."
After reading that, it all made sense.  Nearly every song on Mayfield's soundtrack addresses the social ills and economic realities that led each character to a life of crime, and he takes extreme care to make sure you learn about the humanity of every individual.  In this case, the portrait he paints of Freddie is that of a man who was a victim of circumstance: a soft-hearted guy who was never cut out for dealing drugs or shaking people down for money.
So for every image on the big screen that glamorized the lifestyle (the cars, the clothes, the cash), there was Mayfield saying: hold up; what's the real cost of these things?  Remember, this man died because of these things.
It's a powerful message set to one of the catchiest grooves of the 70s.
And if you check out no other part of the song, take a listen to Joseph "Lucky" Scott's bassline on the breakdown around the 2:40 mark.  It's so funky, it hurts.