Marvel’s stranglehold on the box office continues this week as Ant Man And The Wasp hits theaters worldwide on Friday (July 6). Unlike Black Panther, Ant Man doesn’t have much overlap with Hip Hop outside of T.I.’s role in the film as Dave, one of the employees at the security company owned by Scott Lang (Paul Rudd).
Nevertheless, HipHopDX hit the red carpet for the film’s premiere and spoke to Divian Ladwa, who plays a villain named Usman. He said he fell in love with Hip Hop thanks to one of the genre’s original GOATs of social activism, Tupac Shakur.
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“I’m a massive Tupac fan,” Ladwa told HipHopDX. “A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planet, LL Cool J, Wu-Tang, Dogg Pound, all that early ’90s stuff made me love the genre early on. Then I went from rapping Tupac in my bedroom to going to classical concerts. I don’t really know how that transition happened but I’m more likely to play Yo-Yo Ma or something like that now,” he added.
As for his love for Pac, the British actor says the late MC’s lyrics might actually be more relevant today than at the time he wrote them.
“Tupac’s lyrics today are crazy relevant. One of my favorite verses of his was in ‘Me Against The World’ where he’s talking about how politicians are not necessarily in power — the people in power aren’t necessarily there to take care of you or represent you even,” noted Divian.
As for where the son of an actual Black Panther would be today, Ladwa believes he would have put his social activist background and his charisma to good use.
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“[Tupac] did have that political activist background. I don’t know where he would be because there were so many elements to him but I assume with the current political climate that the social activist side to him would have been brought out even more.”
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