Project Power’s Soundtrack Packs Some New Original Songs

In the new Netflix movie Project Power, a pill gives anyone who takes it five minutes of "power," but they don't know what their power will be and they don't know if the pill will just immediately cause their body to explode instead. It's sort of like Limitless meets Animorphs. Plus a cop thriller. Plus a military guy looking for his daughter. Plus a teenage aspiring rapper.

And it's that last musical aspect that is one of the most enjoyable parts of the film. Dominique Fishback (Night Comes On, The Deuce) plays Robin, a high schooler who deals "power" (the name of the magical, terrifying pill) in order to help pay her mother's (Andrene Ward-Hammond) medical bills. Robin is also a talented freestyle rapper. She ends up showing off her skills to Art (Jamie Foxx), an ex-Army major who has a close tie to the development of power and is searching for his kidnapped daughter (Kyanna Simpson).

Robin's freestyles were written by the rapper Chika (aka Jane Chika Oranika). The 23-year-old also has a small part as a classmate of Robin's and performs two songs on the movie's soundtrack. Fishback is a spoken word poet, which helped her work on the music with Chika.

"When she came to film the classroom scene with us, we had a few hours in a hotel room where they ordered us food and she was sitting at her computer and I was learning some of the other raps. I said, This is the type of person that Robin is. I really want to bring New Orleans into her speech. I’m from Brooklyn and any chance I get, I say it. So I know Robin is gonna be [saying] something about NOLA," Fishback told Refinery29 in early August. "I wanted Chika to mention Katrina and how it connects with Robin. And so she came up with this dope line where she says: 'I've been on a journey of a warrior, the Odyssey, you gotta see the remnants of the hurricane inside of me.'"

In addition to the songs penned by Chika, the soundtrack includes tracks from rappers like Nipsey Hussle and 2 Chainz, as well as some classic jazz.