It's also just pretty striking to see men sitting around talking openly about their feelings. I feel like that vulnerability is kind of rare.

Yeah that's the big thing of like, Oh, dudes never talk about it — and I mean, I think they do. It's just [usually] one-on-one with your best friend. It's not soft to talk. It's alright to talk about this stuff and hopefully that'll get out there. There's some people mocking on Twitter that are like, "Now I'm listening to 4:44 and I'm a changed man," but there's something to making it ok to talk about this stuff.

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Was there anyone you interviewed that really surprised you in either how forthcoming they were or what they're responses were?

It wasn't surprising to me because I've had the conversation with him personally, but Will Smith is more interesting a guy that you could ever capture in a movie or TV show. He seems so naturally upbeat and happy and positive, but that guy uses his money and his fame [to] like — he'll read an article about a therapist and be like, "I want this person to live with me." You know what I mean? Like, he just does cool shit with his money, he's like going inside, and again I've had the conversation with him off-camera, but it was more about him saying it on-camera. It's a matter of what clips end up being used, but I talked to him for an hour and half and it was riveting. Then Jay obviously. Even that first clip where he's like, "Oh, I felt once I met my dad, I'd be free to love," and it's like wait what did you just say JAY-Z?

Did you have any apprehensions about approaching the interview subjects about songs like "The Story of O.J."?

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Because I'm white? No. Ya know, it's funny, I showed [Dave] Chappelle a couple cuts and I was like, "Do you think it's weird? I feel like no other white person has ever asked these guys these questions." It's like no white person ever goes, "Hey, how does it feel?" I mean when you're doing an interview with Jay or any of these guys, you're there to promote something so that's one type of interview they do, and the other type of interview they do is like talk shows, which no one is ever gonna go, "Hey how's racism feel?"

Chappelle was of the mind that it's actually cooler that they were saying it to a white person, [like] it makes it more charged. It's not like [I'm saying that] they'll be more heard or something, but [for example] one of the questions was "What do you wish white people knew about what it is like to be black?" Like straight up, what do you wish they knew.

But for better or worse, I'm comfortable talking about race and I also think, because of my pedigree, those guys assume that I won't botch it. They can be forthcoming with me and I''m empathetic [about it]. I mean they're more apt to give me an answer, based on pedigree and empathy than they might be to Chris Matthews. I don't fucking know why I said Chris Matthews but whatever.

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I wanted to ask about the cast of characters — did they film any segments with women at all?

No, that was the kind of the point — having it just be men talking about emotions. Because there is a stigma about being emotionless. There's that joke in 3 Mics, it's like, "The only way black dudes are sad in public is if they do it with a saxophone." It's like here you go — here are the leaders being emotional in public. I think it's also a thing where it just felt like that was the move.

This album was completed very shortly before its release — how did that impact your filming?

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Well, the hard part was like, I heard the record six weeks ago or maybe two months ago at this point, but I only listened to it once with him. But it's hard to listen to something when I'm a big fan of his and never met him so, like, I'm adjusting to just meeting him and then I'm adjusting to listening. Like, it takes four or five listens to even get what every lyric is so I straight-up did not even catch the "mom's a lesbian" thing. I would've asked people questions about it or around it. So there was some that I missed that I wish I would've been able to hear again, but that's probably the biggest thing that's effected my filming, but yeah for the most part it was a very brief. it was basically like I saw a woman flash me and then they were just like, "Alright now describe them." And I was like, "Wait what, I saw them for like a second, I don't fucking know."