Rapper Vince Staples on his new Netflix show

Rapper Vince Staples is taking a break from music to make his first foray into filmmaking with a new series, the Vince Staples Show.

The Vince Staples Show is an autobiographical genre-bending series, produced by Netflix. 

The Californian rapper says the move into the world of film and television is an opportunity to learn and expand his creativity. 

“Lack of resources or lack of kind of understanding yourself does things to you when you’re younger. So as you get older and you have this opportunity, I have a why not approach to the way that I view things,” Staples says. “So anything I’m willing to lend myself to, if it helps me process life differently or better, or just kind of lend itself to creativity.”

The 30-year-old explains that his first introductions to cinema were through films that often seemed surreal and played with understandings of “perceived reality”.

” I’ve always liked the idea of, you know, the unknown or just a perceived reality down to something as simple as “Toy Story” or “A Bug’s Life,” dealing with perception, especially as a child,” he says. “As you get older, you learn about David Lynch, you learn about the Coen brothers, you learn about Roy Anderson. You watch “Donnie Darko” and you’re like, okay, ‘What’s happening? What’s not happening?’ Those kind of things always were interesting to me.”

The Vince Staples Show is out on Netflix on February 15.