ON MY MIND is an abstract, Afro-cosmic film, aesthetically and symbolically grounded in African culture and New York history. Composer and saxophonist Marcus Strickland’s ON MY MIND remix blends many branches of African-American music, from jazz to hip hop and soul, and beyond. In this way, Strickland’s work is both about freedom and heritage, and the film mirrors this awareness. The film features Strickland himself, poet Greg Tate, vocalist Bilal, rapper Pharoahe Monch, and visual recording artist Storyboard P. Thematically, the song grapples with the unmasking of infatuation in the context of love as the building block of the universe, as we first hear through the powerful words of Greg Tate. Hip hop dancer Storyboard P’s personal brand of dramatic mutation mannerism and emotionally charged, trance-inducing contortions of body and face place him at the center of the film as an ethereal superbeing that expresses the tensions between love and lust. He discards flashy displays of technique for an incomparable, original body language that employs a futurist and transcendental vocabulary. Storyboard P’s forms are carried by footwork so smooth that he seems to defy the laws of gravity and illusion is created through animated movement that appears to fracture space and time. The rare collaboration between Strickland and Storyboard P marks a historic moment—a bonafide jazz musician working with an established hip hop street dancer. The poignancy of their coming together takes us deeper, beyond the surface of this urban setting and this track. America’s classic music—so called “jazz”—and Black street dance, particularly hip hop dance, flex and bruk up in the case of Storyboard P, are profoundly defiant, independent, and innovative art forms cementing the Black experience. Storyboard P attests to this fundamental truth: “the whole point of the street is rebelliousness because street dancing is an extension of slave dancing.” Knowing that jazz and flex are cousins, we convened these forms into a modern dialogue that reflects our present moment in time. To visualize these concepts, we filmed in the streets of The Bronx and at the Museum of Art and Origins in Harlem. Known as the environment that produced hip hop in the early 1970s, The Bronx represents an authentic, urban New York space away from antiseptic, gentrified zones and serves as a canvas for representing the genuine nature of our featured artists. The Museum of Art and Origins is a landmark, private museum showcasing mainly African art. The museum director, Africanist Art Historian Dr. George N. Preston, provided us with access to one of the best African art collections in the country and as a result we were able to interact firsthand with works of art that resound with spiritual and mystical reverberation. The power of life embodied in these masks, carvings, paintings and other artifacts is mirrored by Strickland’s music and the mesmerizing performances of the featured artists. The film’s cinematography and direction aim to visually express the timeless questions of ON MY MIND while also telling a parallel, aesthetic story acknowledging the deep roots of Strickland’s work in a cultural context.