Top 60 Cheo Hodari Coker Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Cheo Hodari Coker Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

I'm a hip-hop showrunner.

I’m a hip-hop showrunner.
Cheo Hodari Coker
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from both Spike Lee and Tarantino, it’s that you can wear your influences on your sleeve but at the same time invoke new energy and new flavor.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The difference between a Marvel superhero and a DC superhero is that we place Marvel superheroes in the real world that we recognize and that we know.
Cheo Hodari Coker
To me, Harlem is one of the most important places on the earth, particularly when it comes to talking about African Americans.
Cheo Hodari Coker
When I was a journalist, I didn’t care how many people talked to Ice Cube before I talked Ice Cube. I just knew that when I talked to Ice Cube, it was going to be different than what anybody else had done, and it was the same with any group.
Cheo Hodari Coker
It’s important to for your kids to see themselves in their superheroes. Really, it’s important for all of us.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Spike Lee is one of my biggest influences. What I love about Spike, other than he’s just a fun guy to hang around, is that Spike is fearless. As much as people talk about him being politically outspoken, let’s not forget that he’s one of the best screenwriters, ever, in addition to being a visual master.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Because I’m a former critic, I view criticism differently than most do. I can take criticism, but if you’re going to eviscerate us, be specific.
Cheo Hodari Coker
One of my biggest influences, of course, is David Simon and his work on ‘The Wire.’
Cheo Hodari Coker
I’m not ashamed of comic books. You have some people that are like, ‘We’re trying to elevate comic books.’ Comic books have always told great dramatic stories.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The thing that was fascinating and frustrating about Pac was that he clearly knew better than to go down the gangster road that he went down. Pac knew – and he was right – that thug energy could be redirected into fearless positivity.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Black women are the most passionate commentators, and even as black female geeks and nerds, they are rarely acknowledged.
Cheo Hodari Coker
My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew with the 100th Fighter Squadron.
Cheo Hodari Coker
With ‘Luke Cage,’ we all, as a collective wanted to tell the truest story that we could but, at the same time, also be very true to the comic book genre.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Some people, when they get criticism, they shy away from it.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Alfre Woodard is a powerhouse, master actor, but she’s also someone that you want to interact with, someone that you want to talk to.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The first ‘Creed’ is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
Cheo Hodari Coker
When you’re dealing with African Americans, family is everything. Because we spend so much time talking about how one treats one’s family. Telling a black person that you haven’t talked to your mother in a week is probably different than it is with other races because people will look at you different.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I just felt that Danny Rand within the Luke Cage universe… I just felt that he was going to be dope.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The Caribbean is such a rich place, and Jamaica, personally, is one of my favorite places in the world. I’ve been lucky to, on various projects, to have spent a lot of time down there.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I think the fact that ‘Black Lightning,’ ‘Luke Cage’ and ‘Black Panther’ have each made noise in their own way will only lead to different superheroes and different genres.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I wanted Season 2 of Luke Cage to be Ice Cube’s ‘Death Certificate,’ or Fugees’ ‘The Score,’ or Public Enemy’s ‘It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,’ or my favorite, ‘The Low End Theory’ by A Tribe Called Quest.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I’m not going to be one of those people who says, ‘I’m a showrunner; I’m not a black showrunner.’ I’m black when I go to sleep. I’m black when I wake up, period. It doesn’t affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it’s who I am, and I’m proud of it.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Television has power.
Cheo Hodari Coker
As long as black people preserve their culture in Harlem, Harlem will always be alive.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I just always feel that any black art should address our perpetual struggle for progress and freedom, period. There’s no way around it. The thing is you can never predict what the next injustice is going to be. Unfortunately, it’s part of being black and conscious in America.
Cheo Hodari Coker
All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do.
Cheo Hodari Coker
In reality, black women, women of color, are powerful, bold, dynamic, and self-assured, so there’s no reason their TV counterparts shouldn’t be as such.
Cheo Hodari Coker
When you’re writing about cops from the perspective of cops, that level of sarcasm about their job and how they treat people will color the writing to a certain extent.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Bob Marley was always ready to deal with the politics of what was happening in the world but, at the same time, not lose sight of the fact that he’s a musician.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Really, the arc for the first season of 'Luke Cage' is

Really, the arc for the first season of ‘Luke Cage’ is ‘hero.’ How does one become a hero? What does one feel about being a hero? How does one live their life and eventually go through the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stages of grief until the acceptance is, ‘Fine, I’m a hero.’ This is what it is.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The reason I keep making so many musical metaphors with ‘Luke Cage’ is that I don’t view it as much a television show as I do a concept album with dialogue.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Black writers seldom get the opportunity to write superhero stories.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I will always get a certain thrill of watching bullets bounce off Luke Cage.
Cheo Hodari Coker
It’s better to write a pilot rather than write a spec show. In some cases, you have to do both, but more often, writing a pilot and having an original voice is more important.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Let’s face it: there aren’t a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you’re going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The thing about Luke Cage that makes him different is – on the surface is he’s a hero for hire; Luke Cage wants to get paid. Luke Cage in the comic books is like, ‘I’m doing this stuff. It’s all well and good, but I gotta make a dollar.’
Cheo Hodari Coker
It’s much easier to talk about racism when you’re able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.
Cheo Hodari Coker
People underestimate the complexity of comic books.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The only thing police patrol cops – in certain situations – are expert at is spotting anomalies. When you are a black person that is driving in a place that you stick out, that’s all they’re going to see.
Cheo Hodari Coker
‘Southland’ was really where I learned so much about drama.
Cheo Hodari Coker
If a superhero is a community superhero, then is he going to protect his community by controlling everything? If he decides to control crime, does that make him a crime boss? Does that make him a criminal?
Cheo Hodari Coker
I wanted Luke Cage to very much be an African American superhero rather than a superhero that happens to be black. I felt it was important to give him that cultural grounding but also show that it doesn’t make him an obtuse or one-sided character.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Honestly, what ‘Luke Cage’ is – it’s a hip-hop Western. And you have Luke Cage as the sheriff of Harlem.
Cheo Hodari Coker
My era was ’90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That’s my rock n’ roll.
Cheo Hodari Coker
‘The Wire’ is, by far, my favorite television show of all time. And I’ve always said that my aspirations for ‘Luke Cage’ was that it would be ‘The Wire’ of the Marvel television universe.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I don’t see female characters as different or inferior to male characters.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The first time that I met B.I.G. was in 1994, summer of ’94 – I believe it was August. I think it was right after ‘Ready to Die’ came out.
Cheo Hodari Coker
My mom and dad met at U. Conn., and their lives couldn’t have been more different in terms of their upbringing.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can’t lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that’s unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don’t always act correctly.
Cheo Hodari Coker
The only thing that’s different about doing a superhero show is that you can have your hero do things that a normal cop in a procedural can’t do. But the structure of the storytelling is universal.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Hip hop fans are obsessed, and they’re geeks about hip hop. Comic book fans are also geeks, and when you can meld the two, then you open the world up to, I think, communities that will just take to each other.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Muhammed Ali is my favorite boxer, and the reason that I love Ali is because he’s not undefeated. It’s because of the fact that he risked it all at times and lost – but then came back.
Cheo Hodari Coker
For me, I was never really obsessed with Luke Cage. My obsession was Wolverine.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Rosario Dawson is such a resourceful, intelligent actress that you can do anything with her.
Cheo Hodari Coker
I can’t turn hip-hop off, just like I can’t turn comic books off. It blends into everything for me.
Cheo Hodari Coker
Sometimes you have to take the risk that somebody will consider what you’re making is noise, but if you don’t try it, then nothing will move forward. I’d rather people hate something than just go ‘meh.’
Cheo Hodari Coker