Chadwick Boseman was a true and living superhero to so many of us, not just on the screen but off the screen in real life. He will be missed tremendously.
What is humbling but also powerfully inspiriting is hearing how much Chadwick pushed himself physically this entire time, all the while secretly fighting his own battle with cancer. Can you imagine training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and other martial arts, continuing to learn and work on new roles as an actor (and perfecting new accents for those roles), going to see children battling with cancer to inspire them to keep fighting, and more? For the average person, 1 of those things would already be a lot for us. Chad was doing it all and not saying a word.
It puts the below clip from the Sway in the Morning show on SiriusXM in a TON of perspective and I can’t even imagine what Chadwick was feeling sharing this story during his own battle.
All over social media, there are stories of people that clowned Chadwick on his livestream because he looked skinnier than usual and lost mad weight not knowing what his back story was… that 4 years ago he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer that eventually progressed to stage 4 colon cancer. This makes me think about social media, the troll culture on social media, and how often it is praised and promoted with a mob-like mentality from a bunch of the average everyday people that follow the bully as they try to humiliate someone. You correct or ignore the bullies, not add on to the fire they are trying to create. We all should know this by now that kindness goes a long way right?
My friend Krohme and I just spoke about this same energy-related to Hana Kimura of Japan. Sadly, Hana committed suicide because mentally the cyberbullying she was going through on Twitter and more was just too much for her to handle. It’s truly, truly hurtful to say the least that this happened to both Chadwick and Hana (in addition to countless others whose stories may have gone under the radar) had to deal with this. It’s embarrassing to me that I am even of the same species as people that are like this and thrive off hate and humiliation.
Moving forward, in order to celebrate “us” while were are here, shortly after seeing the Black Panther film, I created an EP to celebrate all of the positive energy I received from watching the film. I went to theaters twice to see it. The film as a whole and Chad’s individual performance was so, so dope and inspiring. I think the last thing for me was, like 3 weeks after the film aired, I visited Chadwick Boseman’s profile on wikipedia to see how old he was. I assumed, after seeing him on screen, that he was around Michael B. Jordan’s age but nope!!!! Chadwick was 40 years old! When I saw that – it really hit me hard with the adage that “age is just a number” and that age doesn’t define us. That idea was prominently on display because Chad was on screen, at age 40, holding his own against both Michael B. Jordan and Winston Duke who were both 9-10 years younger than him – while (unbeknownst to all of us) going through chemotherapy and more off-screen… that’s mindblowing! It gave me hope for myself because I was 39 years old at the time when Black Panther came out and stilling forging ahead as a creative myself. It gave me hope to just keep pushing myself even at age 39 which led me to quite a few amazing chapters on my creative journey, notably a really dope Hip-Hop residency in Uzbekistan with Next Level USA and lots more.
When creating the “Wakanda Forever” tribute EP, I did my best to capture the energy of their characters on the screen, using my MPK 49 keyboard by akai and Propellerhead’s Reason music production software. Resulting in a 7 song instrumental album that I made in just 2-3 days after seeing the film the first time, I am proud to share Wakanda Forever, and instrumental inspired by Chadwick Bosemen, Marvel Studios and our “Black Panther.”
Please click play below or listen to it here on Spotify, Apple Music etc.: http://hyperurl.co/Wakanda_Forever_EP
Proceeds for this work will be donated to Black Girls Code. So please be sure to click play and listen when you can. The more streams, the more funds I earn for you listening, and the more I can donate towards that amazing organization. It would mean a lot to me. Wishing Chadwick’s family, friends, and loved ones tremendous comfort at this time. Let’s enjoy all of the amazing work Chadwick left behind for us! Below are some of my favorite clips to Chadwick in interviews and more.. please enjoy. Thank you Chadwick for the amazing work on and off-screen to inspire not only myself but millions of the young ones who got to witness a superhero on screen that looked just like them! #ChadwickForever
