NFL
By: Mark T. Wilson
Fans of the OG Power are torn with the selection of Shameik Moore to play the infamous Breeze in Season 5 of Raising Kanan. Their reason is, they can’t get past his past. The best way to look at this is to picture what Breeze meant to not only Ghost, Kanan, and Tommy, but what he meant to NYC, most notably, Queens.
A casting of this importance has to be someone who bleeds that retro-NYC look. What viewers remember of Moore are his roles in Dope and the animated Spider-Man. While breakout roles in their own right, Raising Kanan needed the Moore who portrayed Hip Hop icon Raekwon in Hulu’s Wu-Tang: The American Saga.
While it may not be the reason, that’s why I would like to believe he got the role. Moore has more than held his own in that setting, and as fans agreed, there could not have been a better actor to portray Rae. While the Wu-Tang Saga did not dwell too much on the street dealings of his early years, Moore gave off the impression that he could pass as a drug dealer.
He has that grit about him. He has the NYC slang down, the walk, and the aura. For the OG Power fans, let’s get one thing straight: we don’t know Breeze. We heard the stories from Tommy, Ghost, and Kanan, but that’s all we heard.
We don’t know how deadly he was during his run. How did he view their up-and-coming hustlers we became accustomed to? Most fans of Power and Raising Kanan have Breeze on this pedestal, and yet, we’re completely blind regarding this character.
The Breeze reveal has been building up for a few seasons. To the dismay of some fans, Shameik Moore was not their first choice. Hell, to be honest, he wasn’t anywhere in their top 5. For fans, this was lined up to be an iconic figure and needed to be cast just right. Well, in my opinion, Moore fits that perfectly.
For Power fans, we have to look at it the same way we did Tariq or Unique, or even Monet. In the early stages, how many of us hated Tariq? Then, he grew on us by the second season of Ghost. Having Mary J. Blige as the infamous Monet didn’t go over so well with audiences at first. But like Tariq, she grew on us. The same can be said for casting rapper Joey Badass as Unique in Raising Kanan. Looks can be deceiving, and we can be wrong.
The beautiful thing about finally getting the Breeze storyline is that we don’t know him. The writers for Raising Kanan will have a blank canvas to do whatever they want with the character. We could either grow to hate him or love him in Season 5. Moore may not be the popular choice, but he will prove to be the right one.
