Black Panther was a dope movie, man.
Black Panther--
Rest in peace to Chadwick Boseman, man.
That movie was awesome.
And now that a lot of time has passed,
I can... I can be a little more honest
with people in person, you know.
I didn't go see Black Panther, initially,
when it first came out, y'all.
Mm-mm.
I didn't.
Now you heard that, "Mm-mm," right?
Right. You know a Black woman's serious
when you hear that, "Mm-mm."
I take it, you went to see it immediately, huh?
You went and saw it at the front.
You probably bought a dashiki, the whole nine, huh?
I waited. And that's the thing.
You know, ‘cause the title of the movie is Black Panther,
and for those that might not realize, I am Black, right.
But, I waited. And here's the thing,
if something Black comes out and you don't support it,
you gotta keep that on the low.
Otherwise, Black people will look at you like you sold out.
At least, that's what they said at the meetings, right.
And so--
So, I waited.
But I didn't tell people that I waited.
I lied. I played along.
Anytime I’m out in public, my friends talking about
Black Panther, I rode, like,
I'm in the barber's shop, and my friend's like,
"Yo, man! Did you see Black Panther?"
I was like, "Did I see Black Panther? What?"
I turned into DMX.
"What? Course I saw the movie. What?"
But then they probed too deep.
They're like, "Yo. What was your favorite part of the movie?"
I was like, "Man, I loved how panther-y and Black
and panther-y it was."
"It was so panther-y."
Well, one of my boys called me out on it a little later,
he was like, "Yo, dawg!"
"I was listening when everybody was talking about
Black Panther. Everybody when they spoke about
what they really liked, they were real specific."
"Here you come with 'it's panther-y.'"
"I don't even know what that means, man."
He was like, "Be honest."
"You didn't see it yet, did you?"
And I told him. I was like...
"Nah."
He was like, "Why not?" I said, "'Cause, man, I...
I wanted to be able to hear the movie."
Oh!
'Cause here's the thing. Oh...
For those of you in the audience
and the people at home watching
that have never had the privilege...
...of going to a movie theater where there are a lot of, uh...
...urban folk...
...you should know, for us it's not just a movie.
For us, it is a four-dimensional, interactive experience, aight?
'Cause we talk. We talk.
And I love it when people get angry in the theater.
They’re like, "They're so loud. Can you do anything?
They're so loud.”
No, babies are loud,
we're inquisitive, right?
We want answers.
And what better time to ask questions
than when you're in the room with Michael B. Jordan
on the screen, right?
So, I said, "You know what? I’m not gonna see this movie
for the first couple weeks."
"I'm gonna go out and see it in a White movie theater."
I went out to the suburbs.
Let me tell you something. Black Panther's so Black,
White people were louder than Black people.
In the final scene when he's fighting Killmonger,
this teenager stood up and hopped up in front of me, like,
"Yeah, what you gonna do now, Black Panther?"
"What you got? What you got? Huh? "
What he got?"
And he turned to him, like, "What he got?"
I was like, "I dunno what he got. I have no idea
what he got.”
"Why you here... You're white, sir..."
He's, "What he got?"
And he said it so emphatically,
as if Black Panther was not only gonna hear him,
but was going to answer his inquiry, "Yeah. What you got?"
"Oh you know, I appreciate your concern for my health,
I do, but please lower your volume,
people are trying to enjoy the movie."
"And, lastly, put that egg roll away,
you did not get that from the concession stand, please."
It was a great movie.
And for me, it was also a challenge
watching the movie, because I had two different
sets of eyes while I'm watching it,
this weird dichotomy.
I remember as a kid I collected comic books.
So, I'm this comic-book nerd, but I'm also a thespian.
I'm an actor.
So I was watching as an actor and a comic-book nerd.
The comic book nerd in me goes, "Yo, this movie is amazing,
spectacular, it looks so realistic."
"The CGI makes it look like everything I thought it
looked like when I was a kid."
But, the actor in me's like, “All these Black people
in this movie, I can't get an audition for none of
the roles in this movie, dawg?
So, I could have played Forest Whitaker's good eye.
Let me live.