Nas and Yo Gotti have teamed up for a new documentary titled The Invaders, which examines the plethora of radical civil rights leaders that emerged from Memphis in 1967.
The documentary will also look at how these young, overlooked leaders worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. in the hours leading up to his assassination.
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“Inspired by militant black leaders like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, a new, radicalized generation of civil rights activists made up of young college students, Vietnam vets, musicians, and intellectuals emerged in Memphis in 1967,” Nas’ Mass Appeal said of the film on Instagram alongside its premiere trailer.
“The documentary uncovers the history and significance of the often-overlooked group of civil-rights activists who emerged in Memphis in 1967, detailing their direct involvement with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the pivotal hours leading up to his assassination.”
The forthcoming documentary will be available to watch on November 1, and is executive produced and narrated by Nas. Yo Gotti and filmmaker Craig Brewer also worked alongside the New York legend.
This isn’t the first time Nas has worked on a documentary. In January, the Illmatic lyricist scored a short film from Aflac titled The Park Bench, which examines healthcare disparities in communities of color.
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Prior to that, he won the Emmy for Outstanding Sports Documentary in 2011 for Survival 1, an ESPN short film about the Liberian Amputee Soccer team which he directed, narrated and produced. In 2021, he stepped into the director’s chair again for an episode of the Hip Hop documentary series Video Music Box.
As for Gotti, he doesn’t have direct experience in film, but his work on social justice reform has been noteworthy. Over the last two years, Gotti has teamed up with JAY-Z to fight the injustices via his Team Roc organization, and the pair recently secured a significant win when the Department of Justice recognized the violations at the Parchman Penitentiary maximum-security facility in Mississippi.
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“I think being raised in a family who — I have several family members, my father and my aunties, who went to different prison facilities and I visited them as a youth growing up,” Gotti said while speaking at this year’s UJC Summit. “I could imagine what they were going through, but this situation, in particular, the videos and stuff we saw coming out of there, is nothing like I heard about when I was visiting my family members. I just don’t think it’s right that any prison facility could treat people like they not humans.”
Meanwhile, Nas and Hit-Boy confirmed that their new album Kings Disease III drops on November 11, and unveiled the project’s cover art on Instagram on Tuesday (October 18).
