my first documentary is called just for kicks it's basically a history sort of an unofficial history of sneaker culture or at least it was perceived that way what it really is is a documentary about hip-hop it's a documentary about the power of hip-hop as a music and as a culture and uh one of the various ways to demonstrate the power of hip-hop is the economic power of hip-hop which we've all learned through you know record sales and how big this music and the genre in general have uh have become over the past 20 25 years but i just thought that one of the best examples of that or personifications of that if you will uh was basically the impact of that culture on uh on an industry that has in theory nothing to do with that culture it's not the record business it's not you know live music shows or the typical sponsors that you will come across in the music world it's the athletic business nike adidas reebok and just sports brand in in general garment in general but sportsman and gen most specifically uh have gained so much exposure throughout the world and have gained a cachet through uh that music and you know this freak phenomenon actually happened which we call sneaker culture which is really an offspring of hip-hop culture i had mixed feelings about collaborating with a brand or doing a film uh specific of doing a film produced by a brand about one of their products because it by definition it presented problems that would that would be that it would completely be perceived as advertising as promotion uh for the product which for the brand it is in in any case for just the nature i was equally excited by the difficulty of the challenge to create a story that's compelling and that's intelligent about uh about one product you know about one pair of shoes for that matter uh what about i think i guess it's the first film that's that that talks basically about just one product for a complete hour and and uh and change and that was an interesting uh challenge for me i discovered the hip hop uh i grew up in west africa in senegal west africa and uh i discovered hip-hop believe it or not through the movie flash dance all the girls uh in my school were mad at flash dance and you know the whole phenomenon behind that movie and we wanted to be with the girls so we went to see the movie to see what the movie was about to understand women and um and what we liked i mean you know the one part that struck me was is the guys in that movie the only guys in the movie uh that's that stood out for us was the break-ins we had no idea what that was we had no idea who these guys were that it was indeed the rock steady crew and so forth uh but we liked the fact that there was dudes that look cool and i was dancing in the streets so um me my brother the kids that we were around with we started we wanted to emulate them and sort of be around girls that were into that so uh so we started dancing like that and that we you know soon uh after discovered it was called hip hop that it was the beginning of the phenomenon the backbone of what i play at the house and constantly playing while i'm working what i'm out and about and in general is hip-hop classics uh from 82 on to 2010 if there's any any classic that came out of 2010 i'm definitely playing that all the time at all times singing him in the shower i that's what i you know all day wow