Artistically unpredictable and personally mercurial, jazz genius and American icon Miles Davis lived an impossible-to-pin-down life. For years, it seemed the same was true about Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle's long-in-the-works biopic. Now though, the project is locking into a steady groove. Cheadle, who will direct the film, and his collaborators, which include Davis' nephew Vince Wilburn and musical giant Herbie Hancock, recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funding for the effort.

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Miles Ahead, says Cheadle, will be "an excavation more than checking off all the benchmarks of Miles' life. I'm less interested in making a traditional biopic than in making a movie that Miles would've wanted to star in and that's true to the spirit of his music."

So in that spirit, Cheadle spoke with us about five Davis albums as well as his thoughts about the man's brilliant career and often-turbulent life. By David Marchese