A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad Co-Scoring ‘Luke Cage’
Ever since Krysten Ritter kicked ass as the lead superhero in Marvel’s Jessica Jones, anticipation has been building for the next in the Netflix Marvel anthology series, Luke Cage. Lucikly, the show’s executive producer and showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, who also wrote the first two episodes of Luke Cage, shared some details before its streaming release on September 30th. Cage will be the first of the Marvel shows to have characters based entirely in Harlem rather than Hell’s Kitchen.
We’ll find out how the antihero, played by Mike Colter, got his superhuman strength and unbreakable skin, of course, but the series will also contain some hip-hop cred. “It’s very sophisticated. I mean, it’s got a Nineties hip-hop vibe, but it’s really forward-thinking,”Coker told EW while on the red carpet for Captain America: Civil War. “We have Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad doing the scoring for us.”
The latter is a member of the pioneering hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest and Coker hinted that there may be other musical moments to look out for. “We have a lot of different musical appearances, but at the same time, we’ve got the Marvel action. We’ve got drama. I would like this to be, I mean, I know this is heavy but, The Wire of Marvel television, because we really deal with a lot of different issues.”
Joining Colter’s Luke Cage will be Simone Missick, who was cast as Harlem detective Misty Knight (she has a bionic arm in the comics thanks to Tony Stark). Although not much is known about her character, Colter did promise fans more “badassery,” saying, “We were trying not to be on the nose. We’re going to give all the fans all the things they want. But we’ve got to bring it up a bit and step into the current time. So we’re going to make sure everybody’s happy, but don’t expect a yellow shirt every day. Let’s put it that way… We brought it to mustard. We started there. We knocked it down a bit. Not so bright.”