There’s a mantra that has long guided the creative practice of The Book of Clarence director and accomplished multi-hyphenate Jeymes Samuel, and once you hear it, you’re not likely to forget it: “Obey your crazy,” Samuel tells Ebro in the latest episode of The Message. “People always ask me, ‘What advice would you give your younger self?’ And I always tell them I wouldn't give my younger self any advice. I'll take advice from him. The older you get, the more you’re taught things aren't possible. 'You can't make that movie, it's too big.' A western debut? A biblical movie? 'Obey your crazy!' You are taught to believe 'crazy' is a negative word, but if the whole world is sane, who wants to be that?” That’s a tough question to answer, but when we think about a groundbreaking film like 2024’s The Book of Clarence, a historical fantasy with a predominantly Black cast set during the life of Christ, we have a good idea of who’d like to be Jeymes Samuel: just about any emerging director working today. The Book of Clarence follows Samuel’s debut film, The Harder They Fall (an old-timey western that notably also features a predominantly Black cast), which took Samuel from accomplished musician—the writer/director performs as The Bullitts and has collaborated with Talib Kweli, Mr Hudson, and JAY-Z, among many others—to fast-rising Hollywood storyteller. But to compartmentalize him as one or the other would be inaccurate at best and plain disrespectful at worst; for The Book of Clarence, as well as a few short projects preceding it, Samuel has done both. “I’m probably the only filmmaker that composes the score and writes, produces, and performs the entire soundtrack, and makes the song speak to the score, speak to the film; and have the words in the songs echo the words in the dialogue; and have the dialogue speak directly to the melody of the score,” Samuel says. “But when I do it, I'm kind of just doing it second nature.” For his The Message playlist, Samuel compiled songs from “people that obeyed their crazy”—names like David Bowie, Prince, and JAY-Z (who produced both his feature films). And then, of course, a selection from the person who really led him to believe he could make any of his dreams come true: Samuel’s older brother Seal. “When you're growing up, you ordinarily would think that it's impossible to get into this industry and it's a big leap from where we were,” Samuel says. “But for me, the whole solar system was always mine. My brother doing what he was doing on a huge level, performing in stadiums around the globe, it demystified it for me. It reaffirmed that whatever was in my head was attainable. No matter how hard it seemed. Everything's attainable.”