Ryan Coogler Details How The Tems And Kendrick Lamar Mashup Came About For The ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ Trailer
By now, you’ve already seen the trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and you can hear Tems cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” remixed with Kendrick Lamar’s record “Be Alright.”
Ryan Coogler told HipHopDX his reasoning for mixing the records together for the trailer, expressing how he was very serious about returning to audiences for the sequel.
“We were taking very seriously how we would come back to audiences,” Coogler told the site.
“And that trailer is that first sign of what the film is going to be and it was very important to us that we didn’t misrepresent it. You know, we leaned into what the audiences were going to get without giving away the movie. We wanted to protect the viewing experience and I thought that a song would be a great way to do it. But I wanted to do a song in a new way.”
He continued, detailing how the Tems cover came about and how his “personal music history” influences the mash-up of the songs.
“We were going to Nigeria to work with Tems and her career has just skyrocketed in the last few years and we were excited about that and we thought what if we had Tems do a cover of [No Woman, No Cry]?” he began.
“So we met up with Tems in her hotel room in Lagos with her team and she covered the Bob beautifully with Ludwig Göransson producing and he put it together…I’ve never been prouder in my career of introducing a film to an audience in that way. Really the 90s is when I was really consuming music,” Coogler said. “And what I remember about the 90s is that bridge, ‘Everything is gonna be alright’ would pop back up in songs. There was Father MC with Jodeci, my parents had the CD for that, ‘Everything is gonna be alright, let the music take control.’ I remember loving that song.”
Perfect choice indeed.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever premieres in theaters on November 11th.
You can watch the trailer below.
