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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. With filmmaker Spike Lee, there are a few guarantees. The story will have something to say. The images will enter the cultural conversation, and he's going to weave in New York any chance he gets. Over 40 years and more than 35 films, Spike Lee is captured defining moments in American life. The racial tensions on the hottest day of the year and do the right thing, the sweeping life of Malcolm X, and the devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and when the levees broke.

He's given us dramas, comedies, and documentaries that take on power, history, race, and community.

And along the way, he's introduced audiences to actors, we now can't imagine Hollywood without.

Holly Berry, Rosie Perez, Samuel L. Jackson, and Denzel Washington.

You're leaving out Gene Money, John Colise Sposito?

We'll be here forever.

The list is vast. We will be here forever.

His latest, highest to lowest, flips Akira Kurosawa's

1963 classic, high and low, into a modern-day hip-hop drama. Denzel Washington plays a music

mogul whose world unravels when his family is pulled into a ransom plot. Jeffrey Wright and

ASAP Rocky round out the cast,

with Rocky stepping into a Spikely joint for the first time.

And Spikely, welcome back to fresh air.

When was the last time I was here?

I know it's been some years.

It's been a minute.

Look, I'm happy to be here.

Let's go.

Let's go.

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