Jeymes Samuel

Samuel's career doesn't follow a straight line, which is part of what makes it interesting. He started making music around age 13 (Wikipedia) and eventually built a full creative identity under the alias The Bullitts — named, he's said, in honor of the 1968 Steve McQueen film *Bullitt* (Wikipedia). Starting in 2010, he uploaded a series called "FlixTapes" to YouTube, adding original vocals over film and television themes. The first episode, "Tales of the Unexpected," dropped on November 14, 2010 (Wikipedia). It wasn't mainstream, but it was distinctly his. The music career accelerated from there. His 2011 single "Close Your Eyes" — featuring narration from Lucy Liu and a verse from Jay Electronica, with a video that reimagines Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's *Un Chien Andalou* — showed he wasn't making conventional pop (Wikipedia). He performed at The Big Chill festival on August 6, 2011, sharing the stage with Liu, Jay Electronica, and Idris Elba (Wikipedia), which tells you something about the caliber of collaborators he'd already attracted. His debut album *They Die By Dawn & Other Short Stories...* arrived July 9, 2013, featuring guest appearances from Mos Def, Tori Amos, Rosario Dawson, and others — produced entirely by Samuel himself (Wikipedia). In late 2012, Baz Luhrmann and Jay-Z handpicked him as executive music consultant for *The Great Gatsby* (2013) (Wikipedia) — a significant industry co-sign. That same year, he wrote, directed, and scored the short film *They Die By Dawn*, a Black cowboy Western set in 1890s Oklahoma with a cast that included Michael K. Williams, Erykah Badu, Isaiah Washington, Jesse Williams, and Rosario Dawson (Wikipedia). It was a clear rehearsal for what came next. *The Harder They Fall* (2021) — originally developed under the title *The Notorious Nine* (Wikipedia) — became his feature debut, and the BAFTA win confirmed what the short film had suggested: Samuel's a filmmaker first, even if the music world got him first.