Ryan Coogler shared another story about how Kendrick Lamar’s involvement with the Black Panther soundtrack grew far beyond what was initially planned.
During a recent conversation with LeBron James for Interview Magazine, the director was asked when he realized Black Panther “was bigger than just a movie.”
“To be honest with you, Bron—and it’s one of my great regrets—I was so young while we were making it, and so stressed out, that I didn’t appreciate what was happening, man,” Coogler admitted. “There were a few moments where I’d be like, ‘Oh man, this shit is getting crazy.'”
He went on to explain, “For instance, Kendrick [Lamar] was supposed to do a song, 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***a just wrote this.’ And then on set, Chadwick [Boseman] was doing incredible work every day, Mike was doing incredible work every day, but I couldn’t appreciate the moment,” he continued, mentioning he was “dealing with imposter syndrome.”
This isn’t the first time the Sinners director has shared how K.Dot got involved with the soundtrack.
“I’ve been a massive Kendrick fan ever since I first heard him, since his mixtapes, and I’ve been trying to track him down,” Coogler told NPR in 2018. “Eventually I caught up with him a couple years ago—first with Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith, who runs his label, and then later on sat down with him and Kendrick and just spoke about much his music affected me. 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.”
After Kendrick finished work on his Damn album, Coogler reached out about the collaboration opportunity.
“To Marvel’s credit, they really supported the idea of getting some songs from him,” he explained. “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.”
