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When director Ryan Coogler first approached Kendrick Lamar about contributing to the Black Panther soundtrack, the plan was simple.
“Kendrick was supposed to do a song,” he told LeBron James for Interview magazine. “So he and Dave Free came by and watched a bit of footage and then bounced. Then a few weeks later they hit me back like, ‘Hey man, come listen to the music,’ and they had a whole damn album. Each song had a reference to the movie. I’m like, ‘Man, this n*gga just wrote this.’”
Coogler said the collaboration blossomed out of a mutual admiration in a sit-down with NPR in 2018.
“He talked about my movies that he had seen, and we said if the opportunity comes, we’d love to work with each other on something.”
He continued: “At first, he was just going to do a few songs for the film, and then he came in and watched quite a bit of the movie, and the next thing I know, they were booking a studio and they were going at it.”
Ryan Coogler Comments On New Film, Sinners, and Kendrick’s GNX
The director is currently promoting his critically acclaimed new film Sinners, a project deeply rooted in the spirit of old blues music. In a recent interview with GQ, Coogler was asked about that influence one scene in Sinners bears a strong resemblance to Kendrick’s track “Reincarnated,” in which the rapper speaks from the perspective of blues legend John Lee Hooker.
“I heard that album when everybody else did. Actually a few days after. But bro, me and [Kendrick] don’t talk often, but it’s not the first time we’ve been on similar wavelengths. I’m not going to lie. When I heard that song I was like, Aw, s–t! But [the coincidence] is something I find interesting.
