By the mid-1990s, while Malcolm-Jamal Warner was starring on another hit show, Malcolm & Eddie, after his eight-season run as Theo Huxtable on The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992, he started to veer toward music. Warner, who was 26 at the time, started picking up the bass, and what began as a hobby turned into something the actor dedicated himself to, along with songwriting.
Warner wasn’t another actor who was dabbling in music. He was serious about his craft, first taking an intensive course at Musicians’ Institute before continuing his studies in bass and musical theory at Berklee College of Music.
“He was all in,” said Steve Bailey, chair of the bass department at Berklee. “I mean, you would never know he was an actor or had another profession. He was just all about music and all about the bass.”
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Along with his jazz-funk band Miles Long, Warner released his debut, The Miles Long Mixtape, in 2003 and Love & Other Social Issues in 2007, along with Selfless (2015), and Hiding in Plain View (2022). He also wrote and co-wrote the majority of his songs.
“I figured that the quickest way for me to develop as a bassist was to start a band and start doing club dates,” Warner told Bass Player in 2021. “I put a band together, and pretty soon we were doing covers, from John Coltrane to Living Colour, although acting was still my primary career.”
That year, Warner also won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Performance for his contribution to a cover of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 song “Jesus Children of America,” in collaboration with Lalah Hathaway and the hip hop trio Robert Glasper Experiment. The song was released as a tribute to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut.
Warner said winning the Grammy was the push he needed to complete his third album, Selfless. “That really put the fire underneath me and put some finality to it,” said Warner. “I have to finish this record while I have the attention of the Grammy committee and the attention of the music world.”
Warner picked up another Grammy nomination eight years later for his fourth and final album, Hiding in Plain View, and also collaborated on songs withGeorge Duke, the O’ Jays, jazz musician Johnny Britt, poet J. Ivy, the group Full Force, and other artists. In 2000, Warner also contributed to the posthumous 2Pac album Tupac Shakur: The Rose That Grew from Concrete, Vol. 1.
“I tell people all the time that I have such great respect for great musicians, because of the time, discipline, energy, focus, and commitment it takes just to be an okay musician,” said Warner. “I work hard just to maintain an okay level. People know that I take it seriously, and that I’m not just some actor who strums a few tunes so I can call myself a bass player. I bust my ass.”
Though the first half of Warner’s life was predominantly filled with acting, his second half, up until his death on July 20, 2025, at age 54, was dedicated to his love of music. Here’s a look behind four songs Warner wrote during his music career.
“Tables Turning” (2003)
Written by Malcolm-Jamal Warner
In 2003, Malcolm-Jamal Warner released his debut album, Miles Long Mix Tape, featuring seven tracks written by Warner, including the opening jazzy “Tables Turning.” Like many of Warner’s lyrics, he traverses racism and racial perceptions, unrepaired cycles of self-hate, and more.
If you take the fears, the struggles, the dreams, and ideas of my father’s father and his dad
Wash ’em down in grape Kool-Aid
And like our own form of Purple Haze, and drift about for years upon days
In this cloudless daze of nothingness
“Running on Empty” (2007)
Written by Malcolm-Jamal Warner
Warner’s second album, Love & Other Social Issues, crosses stories of relationships, self-love, and socio-political issues. After the release of Love & Other Social Issues, Warner wrote and starred in a spoken word stage show of the same name in Los Angeles.
“Like my second album, ‘Love & Other Social Issues,’ it encompasses all of that,” said Warner when releasing his third album, Selfless (2015). “I think my strongest suit is the love songs and the problems dealing with love. My journey has been about love: relationship love, self-love, and my love-hate relationship with hip-hop. There’s definitely a social-political side to it, because that’s part of my life.”
“Brand New Day” (2015)
Written by Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Lee Hutson Jr., Megan Hutson, and Ashly Williams
Warner’s Selfless is a blend of jazz, funk, soul, and spoken-word poems, featuring collaborations with Lalah Hathaway, Rahsaan Patterson, Stokley Williams, and more. Singer and songwriter Ledisi and musician and producer Robert Glasper also appear on the track “Brand New Day.”
“I’ve been really fortunate to create my own niche,” said Warner of the music and lyrics on his third album. “I figure if it’s therapeutic for me and the things I’m going through, there’s got to be somebody else in the world who is going through it on some level.”
“Asante Sana” (2022)
Written by Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Dr. Daniel Black
In 2022, Warner’s fourth and final release, Hiding in Plain View, was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. For Warner, poetry was part of his “entire life.” His father even attended Lincoln University to follow in the footsteps of poet and activist Langston Hughes. Warner said, “I was steeped in poetry in the womb.”
Leaning more heavily on the spoken word on this release, Warner called Hiding in Plain View the “most important album to come out in 2022,” and features novelist and assistant professor of African American Studies at Clark Atlanta University, Dr. Daniel Black. “He [Black] drops so much knowledge on this album,” said Warner. “The album offers a shift in our approach to how we raise our young black boys.”
On the musical and spoken word track, “Asante Sana,” which means “thank you very much” in Swahili, Warner navigates more personal and cultural struggles.
I stand on the precipice of this crossroads
It’s like I want to give my life to the cause, but which one?
Ignorance is running so ridiculously rampant
I can’t tell if I’m hating or merely debating just for fun
Photo: Desiree Navarro/WireImage
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