Ryan Coogler is explaining how hip-hop is the lifeblood of his hit vampire flick Sinners. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the Oakland native shared how the film is informed by hip-hop even through its presentation of the blues.

“Blues is the entry point to the movie for me, but if blues was the entry point, hip-hop was the car that I was driving in,” Coogler says in the interview. “For every music that I come across in my life experience, hip-hop is what I know as being mine. It’s my native language. And so for me to really feel like I could make this movie, I had to truly understand that blues was hip-hop’s ancestor.”

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