Sunday Conversation: Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges On How Acting And Music Come Together For Him

For rapper/actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, the biggest thing he took away from getting his recent star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is time to reflect on, as he put it, “The work I’ve done so far.”

It’s an incredibly impressive resume, from Grammy wins for Best Rap Album to his role in the Oscar-winning Best Picture, Crash. Then there are his collaborations with Justin Bieber, Usher, Kelly Rowland, Snoop Dogg, Lil’ Wayne and more and his long-standing role as Tej Parker in the blockbuster Fast & Furious series.

So when you reflect on his work it’s easy to see how he got that star on the Walk of Fame. He has three decades of influencing pop culture as both a musician and actor. I talked to him about how the two worlds come together for him and much more.

Steve Baltin: It seems, for any artist who works in different mediums, it invigorates their music because all creative things come together in one eventually. Is that the case for you?

Chris Bridges: That’s the best way I can put it. You literally said it, it’s the different things that you do. I was just looking at something and I love what’s going on today with re-exciting catalogs of music through other art forms. So yes, to answer your question, I can do movies and you could get a song like “When I See You Again” that Charlie Puth did with Wiz Khalifa and you see how many people are so emotionally invested in it because of how it was displayed within the film and what it represented, that all of these things come from heart.

Baltin: At what point did you realize that in fact not only do they not take away from each other, but again they’re kind of necessary to keep you wanting to do stuff?

Bridges: That’s such a good question because at first it takes a while to realize that sometimes you don’t instantly realize that. And I mean that when you’re doing movies and you starting to realize that music is getting away from you to a degree, you’re kind of like in a frenzy. Like, “Damn, if I’m doing one, the other’s getting away.” But then one day after a couple years it just hit me and donned on me, “Hey this actually is gonna help.” And so when you’re not so much in a rush and start thinking about time, the best things take time, then that’s when you actually realize it.

Baltin: Do you find as well now that you’re enjoying things more because you get to do them more for fun?

Bridges: I’d say yes. There are days where I enjoy it and there’s days where I’m like, “Dammit, I want to compete in all of them. I wish there was more of me.” So, that’s the thing, I know how much more I have to offer. Some days I’m fighting myself because I am competitive. But I see that other musicians, for one, they wish they could be in movies, so I’m lucky on one end, but on the other days I’m like, “Damn I want to compete so bad in music, but then I have to do Fast & Furious prep” [laughter]. I never take it for granted. Obviously ultimately I’m the luckiest person on earth to be able to do both. But I still want to compete in both spaces so much. But you have to come to the reality that when you’re doing one the other is getting away. There’s no way do both of them in the same time. That’s what’s difficult.

Baltin: When you say compete, do you mean in the general marketplace or do you mean more with yourself? Because of course as an artist you always want to do your best work, but you can’t do your best work because if you do then you’re done.

Bridges: That’s a good question. And again, not even being political, I would say both. Any question is good when you know it’s worth to the person to really ask themselves that and once we get off this damn phone. I’m going truly think about, “Am I doing it more to prove something to myself or to prove it to the world?” So congratulations to you. So I don’t have an answer to that question right now, but I do want to say both. It might be equally be both. I have to prove something to myself, and I want to prove something to the world.

Baltin: Does the idea of competing with both yourself and the world, does that push you harder? I think as an artist, unless you’re trying to satisfy yourself, you’re not going to satisfy the world. It’s only when you try and satisfy yourself that then other people see you’re being authentic.

Bridges: That’s dope. You just said, as long as I satisfy myself, then the world would know about me. That’s true. This is what I was gonna say. You just jogged my memory. If you watch that Tamron Hall interview in its entirety and I said that I was like some of my favorite artists. Man, this is a great question for you. You can use it however you want to use it [chuckle], but what is it about artists, your favorite artists, sometimes when they put out a certain amount of projects, when they get older, and we might already be saying the answer of why it doesn’t sound good anymore because they’re doing it not as their authentic selves. Or is it the drugs? Is it, they have so much baggage, emotionally and spiritually? I know so many different things, but from your perspective, I’m asking you all the people you talked to, the ones that are successful into the decades of putting out and reinventing themselves even the best question is, what is it about them that makes them able to stay just as sharp and put out great music?

Baltin: It’s two things. One, and it’s funny ’cause you said this in the Tamron Hall interview, staying hungry, that’s part of it. The other thing too is being able to reinvent yourself. And how you reinvent yourself is by just doing what you want to do and not caring what other people think. So when you think of the Isley Brothers and how they’ve done it for 64 years, or you look at someone like Neil Young in the rock world, or you look at Joni Mitchell, you look at Miles [Davis], Miles didn’t give a sh** what anybody thought. And he was going to do whatever he wanted to do. And if you didn’t like it, you could blow him and his trumpet and that’s what made Miles, Miles.

Bridges: Yeah. But sometimes that goes the wrong way. Your fans will be like, “What the hell are you doing?”

Baltin: Ultimately you’re being authentic and so you’re going to have your hits and your misses. Exactly. But the thing is still the people are going to respect the fact that you are being authentic and you’re doing what you want to do. And look, Neil Young is a perfect example, right? In the ’70s he was a rock god, in the ’80s he put out these synth records that were lambasted. And then in the ’90s he became the godfather of grunge and was the coolest person on the planet again. If you’re authentic and you keep doing you, it will come back around.

Bridges:. That’s great, man. And it’s great to know.

Baltin: I love talking about the artistic process, but give me in a couple of sentences what the Walk of Fame star means to you.

Bridges: Excited. I just looked at it as wherever you’re at when you’re receiving it, take the moment to reflect on what you have done. So that’s how I looked at it, and I’m not able to do that often ’cause I’m always looking forward. So I think that for me it was just simply take a moment to reflect on the work that you’ve done so far.

Baltin: Was there a moment where you start to realize basically that yes you’re being placed in this category with people that you’ve been watching or listening to for your entire life?

Bridges: Hell yeah, man, the fact that Sidney Poitier was one of the first people who was African American to receive [one]. When I started thinking of things like that and people who paved the way for people like myself to be in the movies then you start feeling, “Okay, I am in a class and a category with some of these individuals who really moved the needle and made some strides in film.” And that makes me feel damn good man. Really good.