HOW DO YOU BRING TOGETHER TWO WORLDS THAT HAVE HATED EACH OTHER FOR YEARS?

Give them a basketball.

I’m not talking about a video. I’m talking about a way of thinking.

Rap, the streets, basketball. They’ve been with me for 30 years. Not as an aesthetic I turn to for a project. But as a language I spoke before I even thought about a camera.

So when I see the media cycle—a rapper arrested, the police versus the streets, headlines screaming about a conflict that’s sold as clickbait—I don’t want to just describe it further. I want to do something about it. I want to create something that hits harder than a headline.

My slightly surreal visions aren’t an effect. They’re a tool. Anyone can generate a pretty image. But a pretty image doesn’t capture the street. It doesn’t have the grain you feel in a frame. It doesn’t have the tension that arises when two worlds that have hated each other for years face off on the same playing field.

For me, AI isn’t a toy for generating pretty pictures. It’s a tool for creating raw, bold, street-level scenes that you can’t film live without taking risks, having a budget, and spending three months planning. A proof of concept for a film that doesn’t exist yet, but after seeing these test shots, you already know it should exist.

This is how I view AI. Not as a production that replaces reality. But as a tool that shows whether you have the courage to film that reality at all.

Almost no one captures that energy on screen in a way that isn’t a plastic render.

I do.

Street culture isn't about aesthetics. It's a way of looking at the world. Either you feel the grain, or you see plastic.

And if you feel the grain, then you're in the right place.