What if you were given the opportunity to have superpowers? What if all you had to do was take one pill? And what if unlocking those powers was a luck of the draw that could result in your life being in jeopardy? These questions and more are answered in Netflix’s new action-packed film, Project Power.
Set in the streets of New Orleans, a trio of heroes—a former soldier (Jamie Foxx), a teenage dealer and aspiring rapper (Dominique Fishback) and an officer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)—come together to fight the escalating crime in the city caused by Teleios, the government organization behind the littering of a powerful pill that gifts superpowers (or death) to whoever takes it.
In a round table discussion with VIBE’s Jazzie Belle, Foxx alongside fellow actors Chika and Colson Baker aka Machine Gun Kelly shared whose star “power” in the music industry they’d like to have even if only for 5 minutes. “Prince. All the way. Prince. All day. And not only that, because Prince as a musician taught me everything,” said Foxx before sharing how the late legend influenced his artistry as a musician. “To me, Prince was with someone I had never heard. I never heard a voice like that. I never heard someone put words together like that.”
Baker agreed and shared his personal experience of seeing Prince live. “If you take the pill and you get to be Prince then you’re going to be able to be the best keyboard player, the best bass player, the best guitar player, the best singer, the best songwriter, and the best dancer.
“I guess if I was to take an artist who does great interviews’ swag, it would probably be Liam Gallagher from Oasis because he would just wear sunglasses and own the fact that he loved himself more than anything in the world and that he thought he was the best artist and you couldn’t tell him otherwise.”
For Chika (who also wrote an original song for the film), it’s all about embracing your own personal power, but if she were gifted with the influence of one music artist it would be the King of Pop. Period. “People were just passing out when they saw him. He walked on the stage and people just knocked out completely. And that’s simply without singing a note, without saying anything. His presence was enough to have people going unconscious. I would like that for my life.”
The actors also shared their thoughts on how aspiring artists can find other ways to make ends meet without turning to drug dealing or anything life-threatening while working to make their music dreams come true. “All I would say is, man, that God-given talent, we got to figure out a way,” said Foxx. “And maybe, like I said this is coming from an older perspective, we got to figure out a way to just explore that talent.”
Power Pill is now streaming on Netflix worldwide.
Interview’s music bed provided by Gus.
