My formative years would be in South Central Los Angeles. It was a really volatile environment, but, I always say, when you're living in the hood, you don't live this life where you're crying every day, downtrodden every day.

I met Tupac through Queen Latifah in New York at this party that we were at, at a place downtown called Big City Diner.

The plain truth is, 'Fruitvale Station' was made totally outside the Hollywood studio system, and every ounce of the picture feels authentic. The lives of the people involved in the movie will never be the same.

Producing, in television, we're in the business of voyeurism.

One of the biggest regrets of my whole career was turning down an offer to direct on the first season of 'The Wire.' That would have been so perfect for me.

I'm not a Beverly Hills dude.

When I was small, in the early '70s, my mother took me to see 'Cooley High.'

All the kids looked up to my father because he was known to be that dude who knocks people out.

What's interesting when you see 'Black Panther' is you realize it couldn't have been directed by anybody else but Ryan Coogler. It's a great adventure movie, and it works on all those different levels as entertainment, but it has this kind of cultural through-line that is so specific that it makes it universal.

In 'Boyz N the Hood,' every female character was three-dimensional.