Ryan Coogler has always understood his assignment

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has had an awards season perhaps best described as “intense.” Such is undoubtedly the best way to explain the discussion around the film’s record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations. How many actually translate into winners remains to be seen. But here’s what isn’t. The roots of Coogler’s success are plentiful. One of the main ones is an edict that sounds simple but lives loudly and profoundly: a deep commitment to storytelling.

Shortly after rapper Nipsey Hussle’s murder in 2019, I traveled to Los Angeles to cover the story. While attending a Lakers-Golden State Warriors game at the then-STAPLES Center, a friend texted me to meet him courtside at halftime. He wanted to introduce me to someone.

That someone was filmmaker Ryan Coogler.

Our interaction was brief. Coogler was warm, inviting and seemed unfazed by having released Black Panther, one of the biggest films in box office history, just a year earlier. Ironically, though, Nipsey’s Grammy-nominated Victory Lap dropped that same February 2018 weekend. We reminisced on the energy in L.A. that weekend, buoyed by Hussle’s opus and Coogler’s masterpiece. What I noticed, too, is that he was very actively and openly grieving Nip.

That chance encounter was a year before actor Chadwick Boseman’s death, a passing that haunts Coogler to this day. Nevertheless, a similar cloak of grief seemed to live with the filmmaker in that moment. With Nipsey lived a reverence in Coogler. He loved the rapper’s music. But most importantly, Coogler loved what Nipsey represented to Black manhood in a complicated environment like America. What he said next has stuck with me.

“We can’t let his story be quiet. That’s not an option.”

Just as quickly as the introduction was made, the conversation was over. The Lakers and Warriors resumed play. Coogler was back in his courtside seat. I was back in press row. Life went on. That quote, though, has lived at the crux of all of Coogler’s art. 

Responsibility is what Coogler visibly wears on his sleeve, inseparable from his empathy and transparency. Black stories are their own universe equipped with superheroes, tragedies and every human emotion in between. This space is where Coogler’s movies live. They circulate through that delicate nerve that massages both truth and mythology, each serving as the pillar to the other.

The creative lineage is undeniable. Think of the creativity and innovation of Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Run” in the ‘70s. Think of Tupac’s urgency in the last 18 months of his life, which birthed Me Against the World, All Eyez On Me and The Seven Day Theory. Think of the fearless vibrancy Toni Morrison immortalized in Black life. Think of Black life as a young Black man in Oakland — a city irreplaceable to the Black experience in America. That blood runs through Coogler’s veins. 

Intentionality, not perfection, is what Coogler chases. Taste is in the opinion of its beholder. One view finds Sinners deeply relatable. Another may fail to understand or embrace its cultural nuances. No proper Coogler film can happen without this distinction. The discourse on race, mythology, and purpose surrounding Coogler’s work isn’t hyperbolic.

In 2026, when “culture” has become a shallow buzzword, his movies far exceed equally shallow entertainment. They’re responsible for an intervention that challenges American storytelling during an era when political and ideological forces actively handicap cultural analysis.

That commitment to detail is what lives at the heart of Sinners — and Coogler’s life.

“I think it’s more frightening when — [Sinners] is about blues music, right? — which is storytelling. But it’s also a music that I think was made to help people who were constantly under attack — to help them cope, to help them feel better and to remind them they were human,” Coogler said on NPR’s Fresh Air last year. 

All roads, for me, lead back to that short 2019 conversation in the hours following Nipsey’s murder. Quiet stories and Ryan Coogler don’t mix. The accountability that lives in him is too heavy. The need to explore new universes in him is too hungry. From Oakland to the world, the creativity in it is unmistakably Black.

So the next question is a natural follow-up: What’s next?

There are the known ones like Black Panther 3 or an X-Files reboot. A mystery still shrouds Coogler, though. Kendrick Lamar operates similarly. We never really know what happens in their worlds until they’re willing to open the front door. What’s behind the proverbial door is an examination of rebellious, beautiful and complex Black worlds. In a time when so much is known and lived in public and over Wi-Fi, Coogler has mastered the art of a visible enigma. 

Coogler’s horizon is a puzzle that’ll only be put together when he’s ready to reveal all the pieces. There should be value in waiting. There should be reminders in a world dependent on instant validation that the art so many claim to desire isn’t microwavable. There should be reminders that even as artificial intelligence is no match for a lived human experience rooted in artistic conservation. This point should be the most interesting part of Ryan Coogler’s journey. He’s an interpretation of the poem “Invictus” with Black skin — the master of his fate and captain of his soul.

Storytelling doesn’t expire. It’s how life and the world around us remain documented. There’s no more direct path to immortality. That alone makes Ryan Coogler’s responsibility a lifelong odyssey. Ryan Coogler has reached a point where the world should want to know how he makes sense of it (or doesn’t). An imperfect man, answers are never the solution. The intense human truth he covers is immune to trends. 

He’s not a savior. He’s something rarer. Ryan Coogler is simultaneously apprentice and architect, honoring Black lives known and unknown before, while completing art, oftentimes battling the world that refuses to cower towards and soullessly flatter. 

Not bad for a Black man who’s already changed the world around him. All before turning 40. 

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