Behind the Harlem Sound of Luke Cage
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
PRX
4.6 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Luke Cage, the Marvel series on Netflix, music is almost everything. “I’m a hip-hop showrunner,” says showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker. “It just permeates every decision we make on the show because we’re not just making decisions about plot. The whole thing has to feel a certain way.”
If the first season of Luke Cage introduced the Marvel universe to hip-hop, the second season expands the musical education across the entire spectrum of African American music, Coker says. Episodes in this season will feature jazz, reggae, R&B, and neo soul music, with a mix of old and new releases.
“We’re just showing how it’s like Harlem itself,” Coker says. “When you’re walking down the street, when you’re walking down Lenox Avenue, you will hear all different types of music coming out of cars or coming out of store windows or coming out apartments. And we have that same approach, the same eclectic approach to music on the show.” Because music is so integral to Luke Cage, we asked Coker to break down exactly how music is used in a few scenes in the first episode of the brand new second season, which is available now on Netflix.
This podcast was produced by Studio 360’s Lauren Hansen.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From PRX. |
| 0:07.0 | This is Studio 360. I'm Kurti Anderson. |
| 0:12.7 | On Luke Cage, the Marvel series on Netflix, the music is almost everything. |
| 0:18.8 | Cheo Hedari Coker is the show's creator and boss. |
| 0:22.0 | I'm a blurred, which is a black nerd. |
| 0:25.0 | I'm also a hip-hop aficionado and critic, |
| 0:28.2 | and at the same time, I'm the executive producer, creator, and showrunner of Marvel's |
| 0:33.5 | Luke Cage. |
| 0:34.5 | Because music is so integral to Luke Cage, we asked Koker to break down exactly |
| 0:40.2 | how music is used in a few scenes in the first episode of the brand new second season. |
| 0:52.5 | I'm Lauren Hansen, a producer on Studio 360. |
| 0:58.4 | The music of Luke Cage is a mix of original score, pre-recorded songs, and live performances. |
| 1:05.2 | That sound comes from composers Adrian Young and Ali Shahid Muhammad, the DJ from Tribe Called Quest. |
| 1:12.0 | They take their cues from the show's creator, Cheo Haudari Koker, a former music journalist. |
| 1:17.4 | I'm a hip-hop showrunner. It just permeates every decision that we make on the show |
| 1:21.8 | because we're not just making decisions about plot. The whole thing has to feel a certain way. |
| 1:26.9 | It's a very 90s New York hip-hop vibe. |
| 1:30.1 | Luke Cage's story in the Marvel universe is that he's a man who feels no pain. The backstory |
| 1:36.3 | on how he got this superpower is that he had been in prison and was subjected to an experiment |
| 1:41.6 | that made his skin impenetrable to weapons like knives and guns. |
| 1:47.1 | In season one, he wrestled with the responsibility of this newfound strength, |
| 1:52.1 | while still grieving the loss of his wife, Riva Connors, who had died violently. |
... |
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