Cheo Hodari Coker

All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.

All black art, post-slavery, has always tried to prove in its own way that a black life is the equivalent of anyone else's.

Spike Lee is one of my biggest influences. What I love about Spike, other than he's just a fun guy to hang around, is that Spike is fearless. As much as people talk about him being politically outspoken, let's not forget that he's one of the best screenwriters, ever, in addition to being a visual master.

If there's one thing that I've learned from both Spike Lee and Tarantino, it's that you can wear your influences on your sleeve but at the same time invoke new energy and new flavor.

One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on 'The Wire.'

All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do.

Harlem has always been the nexus of music, politics, culture, criminal figures.

As long as black people preserve their culture in Harlem, Harlem will always be alive.

Even though I'm not Jamaican, I've always loved Jamaican culture because, to me, it's the island of magic, it's the island of politics, of resistance.

If a superhero is a community superhero, then is he going to protect his community by controlling everything? If he decides to control crime, does that make him a crime boss? Does that make him a criminal?

With 'Luke Cage,' we all, as a collective wanted to tell the truest story that we could but, at the same time, also be very true to the comic book genre.

When you're a black superhero, you can't erase the notion that you're black. If you're black, living in the community, and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean, you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.