by Barbara Smith
He may be an internationally known entertainer with a fan base of all ages, but talking with Nick Cannon, is easy as breathing, like chatting on a park bench with a down-to-earth brother (an ultra-cool one at that). Cannon, who grew up in Southeastern San Diego, stars in Spike Lee’s controversial new film “Chi-Raq,” which hit theatres on December 4. Co-written by Kevin Willmott and produced by Amazon Studios, Chi-Raq is a modern retelling of the Greek satire “Lysistrata” and is set against the backdrop of gang and gun violence in Chicago. The film takes its name from the language of local rappers, which compares their brutal streets to the war torn landscape of Iraq. The film boasts an all-star cast including Teyonah Parris, Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson, Wesley Snipes and Chicago natives John Cusack and Jennifer Hudson.
Filmmaker Lee reached out to Cannon to play Chi-Raq, the charismatic outlaw of the film, drawing on his talent as a spoken-word performer, actor and rapper, and also on his ability to relate to the struggles of a disenfranchised population. The artist took time last week to share a conversation on the film, gun violence and Spike Lee’s mission to break the cycle of killing in urban America.
This was your first opportunity to work with Spike Lee. How did this collaboration come about?
For me, it wasn’t necessarily about the role. Spike Lee is a visionary. Even before I saw the script, we sat down and he told me, “I’m trying to save lives in the South Side of Chicago,” and I said, “I’m in, let’s do it.” Coming from Southeast San Diego and living in those areas in the inner city, in a part of a disenfranchised community, it was very similar to what’s going on in the South Side of Chicago. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, all these communities are crying out. These are young brothers that are misguided at times but ultimately these are people who are dealing with a lot of pain and would love some reconditioning.
What was good and/or challenging about the script being written in verse and why this was a good creative choice.
It’s an outstanding creative choice. It’s demonstrates how someone can have a vision and take a play from Aristophanes from over 2000 years ago and use those same themes, concepts, and format to tell a story in a modern day and time and even to put a hip hop spin on it. Being a musician and a poet, I took to it like a fish to water. Understanding that you could take an art form from Aristophanes’ time and then bring it into the modern day shows how talented, how skillful the hip hop community actually is.
You grew up with many of the same struggles experienced by the young brothers in this film. What made the difference for you? What helped you get out?
Faith and family more than anything helped me get me out. I lived in the Bay Vista apartments and grew up going to Mt. Erie Baptist Church in Southeast San Diego. My father and my entire family were ministers. Ultimately there was a time when things were getting a little tough, and I had the guidance to actually focus on my craft first in music and comedy and then as an actor. Using my ability in the entertainment field served as an outlet for me as opposed to the other trouble I could have potentially gotten into.
How hard was it to get connected to the Chicago community when you began filming?
I was with people who really lived that life. When I got off the plane, they said, “Yeah, you’re not going downtown to those hotels, you’re comin’ to the hood with us.” I spent a lot of time with the young brothers in Englewood in the South Side of Chicago to understand why they do what they do, why they move how they move. It was really compelling for me. When you hear people tell you stories about how they lost their mother or a child to gang violence, how they don’t see a way out or any hope –that resonated with me truly.
Talk about the emotional scene in the film where the mothers who lost their loved ones to violence are in a meeting and holding up pictures of their fallen. What was filming that scene like for you?
These were not actors, they were real mothers who lost children to violence. It was incredibly heavy to film those scenes because they weren’t acting. Every picture that you see in this movie is really someone that was lost to the senseless violence in these communities. They’ve been hit with this agony in a way that will never go away. I see these mothers staring at me, holding the pictures of their loved ones. To have to stand there in a firm way and represent that pain was a huge emotional challenge.
What is the takeaway of this experience for you?
We can all relate to having a chip on your shoulder, having a hardened shell because of the pain inside. Sometimes you protect yourself so much that you forget about others. I think that’s where Chi-Raq resides for most of the film. But along with that, there is also the faith and hope that we can take back our communities and recondition the mindsets of these young men and women. We can do that by getting people to really focus on economically rebuilding these communities. We’ve got to put our money where our mouth is. We can’t just be out here preaching; we’ve got to invest in our communities. It’s easy to lose sight of the things that are right next door to us, so making a movie like Chi-Raq means a lot to me. It creates conversation, it makes people think and feel. Great art should make you pay attention to things that need to change.”
Nobody really wants to talk about black on black crime, but this film takes it head on. Did that hit hard for you?
It goes back to humanity. It’s no coincidence that the most violent places in America are the areas with the least opportunity. Spike’s message all the time is to wake up, for everybody to pay attention and respect life. A life is a life and no one has the right to take away someone’s life. I definitely think this truth is potent and poignant and purposeful and on time.
What would you say about the negative response from Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and some City Alderman about the perceived threat to Chicago’s image?
I always say the devil is the author of confusion. That’s a Jedi mind trick sometimes. They try to get you to focus on something that makes other people upset when really, there’s a lot of things we have reason to be upset about. Let’s focus on the babies and young kids dying on the south side of Chicago, not about the tourism of Chicago or how people are perceiving a name. Let’s focus on how we are losing our young brothers in such a massive rate that we’re considered an endangered species. Let’s be upset. Let’s definitely speak out but use our voices to make a change. Spike Lee is such a master at getting people to have the conversation and to speak. That’s what art is all about—to be able to speak and debate on a piece of art and especially when that art is used to focus on making the world a better place or at least having that conversation.
You still have a lot of fans here in San Diego. What do you remember best about your years here?
(Here, Cannon chuckles and answers with great animation) Hey, I’m still in San Diego. I still have a home there. That’s my community. I grew up in San Diego and I’ll never leave. People catch me at the local taco shop all the time. I definitely continue to attend the same places and be a part of the same things I did growing up; that never changes. It just so happens that now I have property in other places in the world too. But I’m never going to leave home.
