"Why this? Why now?"

Well, I'm glad I asked.

First of all we're at what I consider to be a transitional stage in culture, media, industry, and history. We're in between the end of a republican dominated political landscape and on the verge of what may be either the opposite or a true balance of power for the first time in a long time. The habits of entertainment consumers are now split between traditional home entertainment viewing and on demand and personal digital programming. The music and film industries are seemingly suffering because of these changes but I think these markets can still produce financial successes but the endeavors must be more innovative.

The Jack Mackey Project is a fat sack of stanky innovation.

This project is unique in that it's married to a music project in a way no other film and album have been. I've seen docs about the making of an album, and even seen when making the doc might arguably even have an effect on the album (see Metallica: Some Kind of Monster ) but this is probably the first project of it's kind where the film and the album's very existences are dependent upon one another. Just the fact that it's two separate products in one that can ultimately stand on their own is rare.

Than there's the content. Hip hop has taken hits and been a victim of stereotyping for years. It's all gangsta or misogynistic, materialistic, misguided posing. Or it's self righteous, judgemental, not at all fun preachin' and hatin'. Anyone that really follows hip hop knows it's not really that simple but they also know that unfortunately, sometimes it is. However our culture, hip hop and as African Americans in general is a whole lot more rich and gray than that.
How many black films come out about a world full of thugs gangstas and ghetto es? How many come out about a world filled exclusively with buppies who work in the ad industry and play golf and racquetball?

Both of those are false looks at us. We're a lot more complicated than that. Jack Mackey, the film and the album show the truth about the world alot of us walk in. I personally know students, law enforcement officers, lawyers, doctors, drug dealers, rappers, weedheads, thugs, a pimp and a bunch of hyphenates. That to me is more truthful than thinking we never cross paths with people that are different from us.
By the same token my immediate circle are by no means angels we indulge in our share of vices and by and large believe in standing up for our families and ourselves as and with each other.

Being a black can mean constantly walking a tightrope over any number of potential social circles, morals, and destinies. The Jack Mackey project shows this by being a hip hop movie about friends smoking drinking, cursing each other out and being generally obnoxious while simultaneously engaging in philosophical discus ions about the nature of art, debates on the best way to help a friend live up to his potential, and a group of us banding together to make two quality projects. We all took this task seriously and ambitiously, fully understanding that if we executed this right we could, on top of creating good art, be chipping off our own little pebble of history.