Shameik Moore has been ready for his moment for a while now. The Atlanta native has been grinding for years, building his name as an all-around entertainer and artist. As a teenager, he began uploading YouTube videos of himself singing cover songs, as well as releasing original music, and he released his own mixtape I Am the Beat in 2012, before landing a role on the Cartoon Network sketch comedy series “Incredible Crew.” But 2015 has proved to be the year Shameik Moore landed his big breakthrough — the starring role in the acclaimed indie flick Dope. The film has won raves since debuting at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and Moore shared just how much Malcolm — and the experience of starring in his first feature — resonated with him personally.
“Malcolm is a person that’s comfortable with expressing himself in a way that makes him happy,” Moore explains. “He’s relatable. He represents what being different is and what being misunderstood is — what being himself is. Malcolm is a ’90s hip-hop geek who’s extremely talented and has a positive mindset.”
Dope tells the story of Malcolm and his friends as they come of age in Inglewood, California. Moore wants people to check out the story without necessarily comparing it to the “growing up in the ‘hood” films of yesteryear.
“I knew the world would see it like a Friday or a Boyz N the Hood — that genre,” he says. “That’s until you see the movie. It’s a familiar path, but it’s new territory. We have a new perspective on it.”
“[Malcolm] really does express himself in a way that makes him happy,” Moore explains. “He taught himself how to play guitar, he makes straight As, he loves his mom, he has two great best friends. He overcomes all the negative situations thrown in his way and not in an unrealistic way. These are all things that could happen in 2015 and the way that he handles them and his friends and the whole situation — I think he’s just a really bright kid. I think I connected with that. This guy has levels.”
As for Moore, he still can’t quite believe all of the attention the film has gotten, and he doesn’t take for granted how much his career has grown over the past year. And he believes both he and his team are primed to build on his newfound fame.
“Last year this time, we couldn’t get people on the phone to interview me,” he says candidly. “This whole ride was definitely meant to be. There’s pieces of the puzzle that haven’t been revealed yet to the audience or to the world, but behind the scenes, the people who are working and who are involved — everybody knows. That’s why I’m looking forward to presenting it to the world. Dope is really just the beginning. This was all preparation. I’m thankful for it. The Incredible Crew stuff, the videos on YouTube, the mixtape — all of that was just me getting ready.
“It was tough because all of my peers around me were progressing and everybody was ending up on Scream Tours and everybody was on BET 106 and Park. And it was like ‘Dang, when is somebody going to see that I’m here.’ I keep going and I’ve had my team with me the whole time and that’s why thy’re going to be with me all the way to the top. As a human being you have to know how to listen to life and you have to learn how to learn. I think my team and I spent the first couple of years just learning how to learn and preparing for this moment.”
“This is a moment that we cannot take for granted and just pass through,” he continues. “This is a real moment for my team and there was a lot of hard work. I’ve always been there in the loop. You’ve seen me on TV and around these superstars and I’m personally cool with most of them but now I’m getting my spot and my chance and this is what I do with it.”
Being prepared for the moment is a constant reference for Moore. He’s heeded the advice from those around him, and says that being ready and present have been constant themes that elders have shared with him throughout his career.
“The best advice was to take my time and live in the moment,” he says. “The craziest thing is that the same advice has come from different people. It was said differently, but it was the same thing. ‘Take your time.’ ‘Live in the moment.’ ‘Stay humble.’ It all goes hand-in-hand. You can’t forget who you are as things change. You have to continue to operate and progress in a way that inspires people and is real to who you are as a person. Pharrell told me that. A$AP Rocky told me that. My managers tell me that. My dad and my mom told me that.”
And his diligence and readiness have paid off. Moore is currently filming The Get Down, a NetFlix series that is set to debut next year (“I’m the bad boy in that one”), and he’s got new music coming very soon.
“I have my music project, 30058, coming out this weekend to go along with the movie,” he says. “So when I booked the movie, I was already working on this project. This is my way of saying ‘Get ready for my album,’ because I recorded this music a little while ago and it sounds like I recorded it yesterday. That’s the ZIP code I grew up in in Atlanta — in Lithonia. All of the songs I wrote [were] produced by T-Black the Hitmaker. That’s 2015, filming all the way up to December and putting out my soundtrack. That’s what I’m calling it — I don’t want to cal it an EP or a mixtape. I’m calling it a soundtrack because I look at my life as a movie and I wrote the project as the soundtrack to my life, my movie.”
Shameik Moore is ready. And he’s confident. But mostly, he’s grateful for the opportunity to be a positive influence on anyone affected by his acting or music. And that’s his loftiest ambition.
“I want to take it further and progress as a brand and as an influencer. I want to affect history in a positive way,” says Moore. “I want my art to make people feel good. I want my art to inspire people to be better or to work harder or to progress in their lives. I’m talking about the world — but I want young black men to see me and say ‘Yo, I want to dress like that’ or ‘I want to believe in myself’ or ‘I don’t want to be in trouble, I want to affect people.’ I want people to look at themselves in the mirror and start asking themselves the questions that they need to. I want to inspire change in the community. We see what’s going on in the world. But we’ve got to be aware of it in a different way than we are now. I don’t want to get to political and all that stuff — but I want to inspire people to be better. I definitely want to inspire the community first. And the world.”
