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Ryan Coogler is explaining how hip-hop is the lifeblood of his hit vampire flick Sinners. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the Oakland native shared how the film is informed by hip-hop even through its presentation of the blues.
“Blues is the entry point to the movie for me, but if blues was the entry point, hip-hop was the car that I was driving in,” Coogler says in the interview. “For every music that I come across in my life experience, hip-hop is what I know as being mine. It’s my native language. And so for me to really feel like I could make this movie, I had to truly understand that blues was hip-hop’s ancestor.”
Sinners is a monster hit. According to Box Office Mojo, Sinners has reached a major box office milestone: surpassing $350 million worldwide.The movie stars Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who move back to Mississippi from Chicago to open a jook joint. It also features Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Omar Miller and Delroy Lindo.
Later in the Rolling Stone interview, Coogler talks about the power in Black music — and how that power can be exploited. But ultimately, he sees Black music as a liberator.
“I got a family who was very intergenerational since slavery was abolished,” he says. “They fled the Jim Crow South. We make it our business to stick around each other. I could not justify [making] a movie with vampires biting into people’s necks without showing this part of me; showing these people – that drew the straw of being born and dying in the height of sharecropping, miscegenation laws, and these back-breaking, dehumanizing, racist policies – with their descendants having a good time. Music is magical. That was the A side to the B side of everything else. Hip-hop has its place in that.”
Sinners makes its streaming debut today (June 3).
English (US) · 