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It was very challenging, trying to add an orchestra on top of these traditional African rhythms, because as soon as you add any kind of melody or chords over it, it stops feeling African.
At USC, when I studied film scoring my first year, one of my first friends that I met was Ryan Coogler. He was in the directing program at USC. He became one of my best friends at school.
I was able to learn a new language - a new musical language is learning a new language, because it's so extremely different from Western classical music. African music is completely different.
In western classical music with an orchestra, you focus the orchestra on melodies and harmony. In African music, the biggest focus is on rhythms and counter-rhythms - the complexity of rhythms.
For the last 10 years, I've been working with Donald Glover and Ryan Coogler, and we've put down so much time really trying to make the best that we can, whether it's a movie, a film score, or a song.
I was drawn to West Africa. I did listen to a bunch of different styles of African music, and there was something about the percussion and the drums of West Africa, and the energy, that felt so cinematic to me.
I would say that 'Creed' has a lot more music in it. It's 60 minutes of music, while 'Fruitvale' had about a fourth of that at best. There's a bigger focus in 'Creed' because I had to make music for training montages.
No matter where you're born or what country you're from, you connect with 'This is America.' It speaks to people; it connects right to your soul. It calls out injustice, celebrates life, and reunites us all at the same time.
I've worked with Childish Gambino for so long, so I've learned that from those producing skills - how to really produce music - where, of course, it's about writing, but it's also about combining sounds and styles and genres.
One of the instruments that really stuck out to me was the talking drum, which is basically the first type of communication device. It's a drum you put on your shoulder, and you can pitch it with your arm, and you can 'talk' with it.
For the score of 'Black Panther,' the heart and soul came from immersing myself in the rich musical history of the griots in West Africa. I was following these brilliant musicians all over rural Senegal, learning their musical language.
The through line of the way I like to work, what makes me different, and what I like to do for every project - although they are completely different from each other - is I like to do a lot of research and create a unique landscape and unique soundscape for each movie.
The plan was just to make great art, and working with Donald Glover, who is such a renaissance man, we've been working together for ten years, and he is always pushing the envelope in a way - like, whenever we work together, I have no idea what it is going to turn out to be.