Cropsey! If there was ever an urban myth that I thought was real, the kid-snatching Cropsey legend was it. Growing up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, I was fortunate enough to go on hiking trips in Staten Island and the Cropsey camp fire stories were always the best. There was Jason, then Freddy, but those were only characters in the movie to me. Yes, I admit I had some sleepless nights after the first "Nightmare on Elm Street".

So, “Kobe Doin’ Work”… What motivated you to do a sports documentary?

Well, I’m a filmmaker, I make films. I haven’t done anything on basketball since “He Got Game” with Denzel Washington, Rosario Dawson, and Ray “Jesus Shuttlesworth” Allen. And, I thought Kobe would be an interesting subject to do it on.

Black music is in a rut. In order to be accepted by major labels, the radio, or the population at large, it seems that artists must talk about drugs, hoes, or money. Recently all three have been compounded into making it "rain" drug money on hoes. It’s trite, tired, and frankly time for something new.



That new thing is Afro Punk, although its not really new at all.. Afro Punk has been since the 70’s, with black members in all sorts of old school punk bands and all black acts like Fishbone and Bad Brains. The genre has reached unprecedented notoriety of late thanks in large part the efforts of one man, James Spooner. James grew up feeling out of place as one of the few black kids in the Majority white punk scenes in California and later New York City.



The feeling of belonging to an isolated subpart of an abstruse Subculture drove James to direct his first documentary film, Afro-Punk.



Afro-Punk documents the similar struggles of black kids on the punk scene across America, from being “the only black kid in the room” to the difficulty of finding love when you are often viewed as just a novelty. James’ new film, White Lies/ Black Sheep, picks up where the first film left off



Recently I spoke to Spooner to discuss his new film, race, the mainstream, and the “other black experience.”

The curtain parted at the ornate old theatre, and a thickly packed crowd of 500 craned their necks to get a glimpse of the stage. Five men in matching African robes stood with their instruments, working on a steady, rumbling groove. The audience swelled in anticipation, searching for the group’s notorious leader, nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, shouts go up from the back row as a conga line of horn players, dressed identically to the rhythm section on stage, makes its way to the front. Taking their places on the cramped stage and raising their instruments to their lips, a brassy riff explodes like fireworks over the already heavy beat. The cheers haven’t begun to subside when from the corner of the stage three dancers, young women elaborately made-up and barely dressed, undulate to their positions in front of microphones. The crowd is now in a frenzy. Finally, a piercing saxophone rises above the ferocious rhythm and the man himself struts to center stage. Femi Kuti has arrived.

Kerry “Krucial” Brothers is a talented Grammy award winning, multi-Platinum producer and writer. His life is one of many journeys, from growing up in the streets of Far Rockaway, New York to becoming the founder and co-CEO of KrucialKeys Enterprise. He has produced, written, arranged and composed songs that appeared on soundtracks such as Dr. Doolittle, Drumline, Shaft and Ali, and has worked with artists like Rakim, Mario, Angie Stone, Nas, Keyshia Cole, and of course Alicia Keys. With Keys he was the main producer, writer, and reason why both ‘Songs In A Minor’ and ‘The Diary Of Alicia Keys’ have gone on to sell over 17 million albums collectively world-wide. We at Urbanheights.com were able to talk to Krucial about KrucialKeys and his upcoming EP, as he settled in from his trip to Africa.