After directing the successful adult animated films Fritz The Cat and Heavy Traffic, Ralph Bakshi decided to push the envelope further with the polarizing COONSKIN. In this satirical crime adventure, Randy (soul legend Barry White), an escaped prisoner waiting for his getaway car, tells his cell mate the story of the rise and fall of allegorical figures Brother Bear (Phillip Thomas), Brother Fox (Charles Gordone), and Brother Rabbit (White) in Harlem.. Controversial for its language and imagery, COONSKIN is nonetheless groundbreaking in its approach to tackling important social issues of the time, and counts Quentin Tarantino and Wu-Tang Clan among its admirers.. "COONSKIN could be [Bakshi's] masterpiece ... a shattering successful effort to use an uncommon form—cartoons and live action combined—to convey the hallucinatory violence and frustration of American city life, specifically black city life." - Richard Eder, The New York Times