Next month Luke Cage will join Netflix as Marvel‘s third original series for the streaming service. The Harlem-based comic character with impenetrable skin and superhuman strength will be played by Mike Colter and will be Marvel’s first Black lead character, which is a major milestone. Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker wants to make sure the show is injected with Hip Hop elements as well.
“I’m calling episodes songs. They are all musical. Each episode is named after a Gang Starr song,” Coker told attendees at the show’s TCA panel. “It wasn’t as much about bringing the world’s together as it was talking about something that was already there. 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.”
#LukeCage . One "Moment of Truth." Two: "Code of The Streets". Three: "Who's Gonna Take The Weight?
— Cheo Hodari Coker (@cheo_coker) July 29, 2016
Look for new titles every Friday until SWEET September 30th.
— Cheo Hodari Coker (@cheo_coker) July 29, 2016
The show’s first two trailers played Nas‘ “Made You Look” and Ol’ Dirty Bastard‘s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” respectively, so there was always a sense that Hip Hop would be incorporated with the show. In addition, real-life artists such as Jadakiss, Faith Evans, and Raphael Saadiq have all been confirmed to make cameos as performers at the show’s fictional club “Paradise”.
These choices come from a place of Coker’s belief that if Luke Cage were real, he’d be a Hip Hop head. As per Deadline:
I had all these sequences with Luke running with music, some stuff we could clear, some stuff that couldn’t make it. I always in my head had him listening to Boot Camp Clik, Biggie, Mobb Deep, Hieroglyphics, Pharoahe Monch, a lot of the real lyrical mid-to-late ’90s era hip hop, but at the same time also appreciates the west coast. [Dr. Dre’s] The Chronic is gonna be in there. Just kind of that era of Hip Hop, very specific as to why Luke Cage is wearing Carhartt, very specific as to why he’s wearing Timberlands.
A Tribe Called Quest founding member, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge will also do the series’ score, with a vinyl soundtrack album produce by the twosome to drop as well.
Luke Cage hits Netflix September 30.
