Wood Harris: Hip-hop is colorless but still rooted in black culture

Wood Harris and Mack Wilds talk about their roles in VH1's original hip-hop film, 'The Breaks'...

Jan 4, 2016

You might remember Mack Wilds from his role as Michael Lee on The Wire, or you probably caught his starring role in Adele’s “Hello” video.

Tonight, Wilds is revisiting the golden era of hip-hop in VH1’s original film, The Breaks.

The Breaks will chronicles the journey of Nikki (Afton Williamson), David (David Call) and DeeVee (Mack Wilds), three friends united by their love of hip-hop, as they work to make their big mark in the music industry. The film takes viewers on a journey back to the summer of 1990 in New York City, where the music industry’s artists and hustlers intersect in the dance clubs and the street corners of the still crime-ridden city.

The film also features Wood Harris as a slick hip-hop record label executive.

In an interview with theGrio, Wilds and Harris open up about their roles in The Breaks.

The pair weighed in on the current hip-hop climate and whether or not hip-hop should be a colorless music genre.

“I think it’s supposed to be [colorless],” Wilds said. “I think hip-hop is a voice for the people. Not necessarily our people, but the people who don’t have a voice. For the people who don’t have a voice, it doesn’t matter what color you are, what creed you come from, what ethnicity, what race, what religion… I think there’s disenfranchised youth everywhere. There’s people everywhere that don’t have a voice. Hip-hop is our voice.”

Harris says no matter what race a rapper is, hip-hop intrinsically includes elements of black culture.

“I think [hip-hop] is colorless to an extent,” Harris said. “You can take non-black rappers, and they still use black colloquialisms. The roots of hip-hop are still in a sense black. Hip-hop is colorless because anybody can get on the floor and play the game, but some of the tenants of it are still rooted in the black American culture.”

“As long as you know your roots, you won’t get ‘G checked,'” Wilds added.

Be sure to watch The Breaks tonight at 9/8c on VH1.