Cheo Hodari Coker

Journalist

1972-12-12

Cheo Hodari Coker is an American journalist and television writer-producer known for his work on Luke Cage and other series. He previously wrote about music and culture before moving into screenwriting and showrunning.

Books by Cheo Hodari Coker

Unbelievable
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Dreamgirls
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Quotes by Cheo Hodari Coker

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.
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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.
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My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew with the 100th Fighter Squadron.
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Bushmaster was such a great adversary, and Mustafa Shakir, just the way that he embodies him in terms of the power of the voice, the stillness, and then, at the same time, when they do get after it, when he does fight, just how kinetic he was. He just brought a great dynamic and being able to explore his history in making the character Jamaican.
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The reason that Shaft has a dominant theme song is because James Bond has a dominant theme song.
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Muhammed Ali is my favorite boxer, and the reason that I love Ali is because he's not undefeated. It's because of the fact that he risked it all at times and lost - but then came back.
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The thing is, so much of the African American experience is about the redefinition of roots because of slavery. We were uprooted, and there's so much about our whole legacy that was stolen and that we lost in the Transatlantic slave trade that we'll never find out.
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When I was a critic, I reviewed Public Enemy's 'Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age' - this is back in '94 - and I called it a 'Dante-esque spiral of the hip-hop hell.' I idolized Chuck D, but I just hated that record, and I did not hold back. Chuck didn't freeze me out. Every time I met Chuck, he always treated me with the utmost respect.
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