UpRising: What is the difference between a composer and a music supervisor?

Derryck "Big Tank" Thornton: As a music composer, that's what I did on The Boondocks—I wrote all of the music, from the theme song to all the pianos in the background, just every stitch of music written that set the tone. As a supervisor, I'm also setting tone, but it's more with song than with music. So if it's a sex scene or a chase scene, you can do it both ways. You can put a song in that sounds like [Wu-Tang’s] "Bring da Ruckus." So one guy is articulating the scene through music and kind of making his own plate, and the other person is picking the song to make the emotion happen. They're both very creative jobs.