Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don't always act correctly.
— Cheo Hodari Coker
All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.
Television has power.
Black writers seldom get the opportunity to write superhero stories.
If you're a black person in America, it's really hard to avoid being black. And what I mean is that the reality of your cultural history, regardless of whether or not you talk about it, it's there.
The difference between a Marvel superhero and a DC superhero is that we place Marvel superheroes in the real world that we recognize and that we know.
'The Wire' is, by far, my favorite television show of all time. And I've always said that my aspirations for 'Luke Cage' was that it would be 'The Wire' of the Marvel television universe.
Honestly, what 'Luke Cage' is - it's a hip-hop Western. And you have Luke Cage as the sheriff of Harlem.
One of my favorite comic books of all-time is the graphic novel 'God Loves, Man Kills.'
People underestimate hip-hop the way they have sometimes underestimated comic books.
It's much easier to talk about racism when you're able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.
'Daredevil' is haunted by Frank Miller, from the standpoint of the Frank Miller run on 'Daredevil' is so insurmountable.
When you scratch the soul of hip-hop, you find R&B and funk but also reggae.
I finally achieved my dream by being a TV showrunner.
The Luke Cage you saw in Season One was a reluctant hero. He was trying to figure out if he wanted to be a hero in the first place. And then fate intervened and forced him to step up his game.
I just felt that Danny Rand within the Luke Cage universe... I just felt that he was going to be dope.
The reason I keep making so many musical metaphors with 'Luke Cage' is that I don't view it as much a television show as I do a concept album with dialogue.
One of my favorite memories as a kid was when the original 'Secret Wars' came out with the debut of the black costume for Spider-Man. I remember I couldn't wait to get home to read it, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, I've been waiting for this comic to come out. I hope, God forbid, nothing happens to me before I get home to read it.'
I'm a hip-hop showrunner.
My mom and dad met at U. Conn., and their lives couldn't have been more different in terms of their upbringing.
It's important to for your kids to see themselves in their superheroes. Really, it's important for all of us.
That's the thing about TV: it gives you so much time to tell your story; it's comparable to comics.
I'm not going to be one of those people who says, 'I'm a showrunner; I'm not a black showrunner.' I'm black when I go to sleep. I'm black when I wake up, period. It doesn't affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it's who I am, and I'm proud of it.
As long as black people preserve their culture in Harlem, Harlem will always be alive.
The reason that Shaft has a dominant theme song is because James Bond has a dominant theme song.
The first time that I met B.I.G. was in 1994, summer of '94 - I believe it was August. I think it was right after 'Ready to Die' came out.
Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.
Fatherhood is something that is personal to me because I didn't grow up around my father.
Even though my approach is slightly different, the Luke Cage of 'Jessica Jones' is no stranger to the Luke Cage of Marvel's 'Luke Cage.' It's really a continuation to a certain extent. It's just got a little different flavor, but it's still the same suit.
My era was '90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That's my rock n' roll.
Most superheroes, when you look at origin stories - before they invent their costume, they just go with what's around.
Hip hop fans are obsessed, and they're geeks about hip hop. Comic book fans are also geeks, and when you can meld the two, then you open the world up to, I think, communities that will just take to each other.
Even though I'm not Jamaican, I've always loved Jamaican culture because, to me, it's the island of magic, it's the island of politics, of resistance.
I just always feel that any black art should address our perpetual struggle for progress and freedom, period. There's no way around it. The thing is you can never predict what the next injustice is going to be. Unfortunately, it's part of being black and conscious in America.
For me, hip-hop has always been black superhero music.
Even though I've got this really brawny, masculine reputation, I'm a Shondaland Thursdays kind of guy.
My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew with the 100th Fighter Squadron.
I wanted Luke Cage to very much be an African American superhero rather than a superhero that happens to be black. I felt it was important to give him that cultural grounding but also show that it doesn't make him an obtuse or one-sided character.
Alfre Woodard is a powerhouse, master actor, but she's also someone that you want to interact with, someone that you want to talk to.
One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on 'The Wire.'
To me, Harlem is one of the most important places on the earth, particularly when it comes to talking about African Americans.
All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do.
Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.
All black art, post-slavery, has always tried to prove in its own way that a black life is the equivalent of anyone else's.
Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.
The first 'Creed' is one of the best movies I've ever seen.
The thing that was fascinating and frustrating about Pac was that he clearly knew better than to go down the gangster road that he went down. Pac knew - and he was right - that thug energy could be redirected into fearless positivity.
You can't really say that Bushmaster or Mariah Dillard is a bigger bad, because they both do some pretty heinous things.
The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can't lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that's unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.
The power that you have as a storyteller is to be able to tell stories that are at once entertaining but also never lose sight of what's going on in the real world.
