How did you feel about the way your mother, your mother grapples with those particular themes?

Yeah, you know, I was struck back when I was watching this.

I've watched it twice, by the way.

And I remember, I think it was the second season of Rami where Mahershala Ali also has a guest run on that show.

And he plays a sheikh in that character.

And in that character...

He has this kind of really brilliant explanation of Islam in practice and an observation where she kind of explains, like, you have an orange and the outside, the rigid, you know, outside allows you to enjoy the kind of contradictions of the juicy center and get the delights of faith.

Are there any places that this movie didn't go or maybe didn't go far enough that you wish it had?

Yeah.

Whether or not you agree, right, and I, I definitely disagree, right? But I think there's a lot of assumption that Jay-Z is, like, this Trojan horse, or is being duped into being a crony for, like, billionaire capitalists.

And I think if there's one thing you could take away from this eight episode stretch is that he genuinely believes that the hustle and capitalism saved him, and he thinks he can use that to liberate other people.

Now, whether or not that's possible, I, I would argue not, but I think that's the most explicit he's been about his belief of what his riches are worth, and why he's willing to sacrifice his privacy for it.

Yes

...

in their transition to legacy artist, right? And the Super Bowl has stopped being, like, a space for legacy art for quite some time now, for at least, like, 20 years at this point.

And so if there was any time for Jay to wanna take that stage, it kind of has to be now, right? You know, he's kind of announcing that he's passing the torch in- informally with these sort of limited, you know, engagements.

Yeah.

The theme of just a crisis of faith and the different ways and different textures in which it is explored, not just within Islamic faith, but also offers nuance and a heft to the ways in which people sometimes orientalize the idea of the pious Muslim and how we actually go through and interpret our own relationship with spirituality, and I found that remarkably compelling.

The acting was phenomenal, out of this world, and some really great performances.

Mm

... especially families going through grief, families trying to really maintain a sense of normalcy while everything is shifting around them.

I really found that the small, minute ways in which they made the specificity universal so striking.

Like, there are like brief asides at different points in the film that really make it clear, for example, that John Cho's character and Mahershala's character actually have a crisis of faith that may have rooted from similar experiences.

[laughs]

... watch how he ex- articulates his life experience to Rick Rubin, it's quite clear that his core narrative is, "I took capitalism by the reins.

I was a hustler, and then I turned the rap game into a hustle, and it worked." It's very hard for him to fundamentally believe the idea that capitalism and the structure of capitalism can be harmful when he views it as a tool of liberation for himself, and a way-

Yeah

...

Black capitalism work for you.

So it's interesting to watch those sort of sentiments and his thinking on those sentiments bleed through, right? He has a point, for example, that he goes on a protracted kind of explanation of his frustration with, he doesn't mention her by name, but Elizabeth Mendes Berry, who interviewed him a few years back for The Village Voice and confronted him over his Che Guevara shirt where he had, like, a large diamond on.

And he directly responded to it in a verse, talked about he's Che Guevara with, with bling on, "I'm complex." And, like, it's clear that, like, it still bristles him a lot, right?

Tell me where you came down on this whole thing.

I think, you know, for me what kinda comes out is not just accountability but, like, the concept of storytelling, right? I think a big part of this documentary was the stories that we tell ourselves and how we square that with the narratives that other people have of us, right? So, like, the story of America's Next Top Model is, like, a phenomenon around what was supposed to be an inside lookouts to all the trials and tribulations it takes to become a successful model.

But then it ends up becoming a saga of how can we make a good reality television show? How can we sell a good narrative? And they say that at different points.

Like, they point out-

Exactly.

Because, to be frank, you know, we have Shandi give a very harrowing story about what she went through and really confront what is clearly traumatic to her over and over again, not just in the process of making the documentary, but also just throughout her career as a public figure.

But what I think becomes ultimately striking is in confronting, you know, the other participants, the producers, Tyra, so on and so forth.