Exclusive Clip: Andre Benjamin Brings Hendrix's Power of Love to 'Jimi: All Is By My Side'
The fact that Jimi Hendrix was a black man who earned massive success in rock music, a genre pioneered by the likes of Little Richard and Chuck Berry but ultimately dominated by white musicians (and audiences), was something the legendary guitarist and singer often had to begrudgingly confront. So much is reflected in a pivotal scene from the new film Jimi: All Is By My Side, which you can watch exclusively above.
Jimi is a non-traditional biopic written and directed by John Ridley (who took home an Oscar earlier this year for adapting 12 Years a Slave) and starring Andre Benjamin (aka Outkast’s Andre 3000) in the title role. The film focuses on Hendrix’s move from playing backup in small New York clubs to his emergence as rock royalty after a move to London in 1966.
In the sequence here, Hendrix deflects the laments of Michael X (Adrien Lester), a civil rights activist who tells him he should be using his growing popularity to inspire the young black British – “his people,” not “all these white kids.” Hendrix replies, “My people? They’re all my people. Every last one of them.”
Benjamin, who lost 20 pounds for the part and worked with a vocal coach to master Hendrix’s lackadaisical inflexions, told Yahoo Movies this week that as an artist whose group has an ethnically diverse fan base and headlines heavily white festivals like Coachella, he’s always related to Hendrix’s mindset. “When you look at the Outkast history, I remember at points where the audience starts to change in who’s showing up,” he said. “And my whole thing was, it’s music, so you want everybody to be involved. It’s actually cooler when everybody can get into it. I definitely agree with Hendrix in the movie when he says he does it for everybody. It’s kind of stupid to say, ‘I do music for one group of people. It’s stupid. I don’t get it.”
Hendrix clearly had a post-racial mentality long before the idea of post-racism was ever coined or debated. As he offers idealistically at the end of the clip, “You really want to change things? When the power of love takes over the love of power, that’s when things will change.” Preach on, Jimi.
Come back to Yahoo Movies on Thursday for our full interview with Andre Benjamin. Jimi: All Is By My Side opens in select cities Friday.
