Shameik Moore Gets Real on Crew Has It: Power, Breeze, and Beyond

Some podcast episodes feel like events. The Crew Has It installment featuring Shameik Moore, with Kris D. Lofton and Gianni Paolo holding court, is one of those. Moore, who steps into the Power Universe as the legendary Breeze in Raising Kanan, sat down for a conversation that ranged from how he landed the role to his clashes with the show's strict script adherence, his admiration for his castmates, his independent film ambitions, and a chaotic courtroom detour involving Lil Durk lyrics being read aloud by a white prosecutor. It was, in short, essential listening.

A Straight Offer and a Deep Dive Into the Bible

When Lofton and Paolo asked Moore how the Breeze role came together, the answer was as clean as the character himself. No audition, no callbacks, no drawn-out process. Moore received an email, showed up on set, and that was that.

"Straight offer," he said with the calm confidence of someone who has learned to receive good news without overthinking it.

But landing the role was only the beginning. Moore was candid about where his head was before he got the call. He had been deep in his own world, focused on himself and his craft, leaving little bandwidth to catch up on the Power Universe. He had watched the original Power series but had stepped away from it at some point. When Breeze came into the picture, he knew he had to course correct fast. He went back, watched everything, and then did something that resonated throughout the conversation: he read the entire show bible, cover to cover, every book, every character arc, every layer of the world he was about to enter.

"I needed to understand who everyone was, what everybody brought to the table, how everybody fit into the books and the stories," he explained.

By the time he walked onto set, he knew what he needed to do.

Omari Hardwick, 50 Cent, and Joining Something Already Built

Moore was asked whether he had any favorites from across the Power franchise, and his answer was both gracious and specific. He made clear from the jump that he came in as number eleven on the call sheet, fully aware that he was joining a world that existed long before him. There was no ego about it. He was there to support and contribute, not to take over. But within that humility, two names stood out.

The first was 50 Cent. Moore spoke about wanting to connect with him as a creator, and his admiration went deeper than fandom. He pointed to what 50 built with Power on Starz as a masterclass in ownership and platform building, something Moore is actively thinking about in his own career.

"I had never heard of Starz before Power," he said, noting that what 50 accomplished without the traditional machinery of YouTube or mainstream digital promotion was genuinely instructive.+

The second name was Omari Hardwick, whom Moore called the GOAT without hesitation. He described Hardwick's performance as his biggest concern coming into the franchise, not out of intimidation but out of deep respect for what Hardwick had contributed to the universe. "Incredible," was the word Moore kept returning to.

The Set Was Strict and the Challenge Was Real

One of the most revealing stretches of the episode came when Moore talked about his actual experience on the Raising Kanan set. He had nothing but love for director Sasha Compere and the entire production, but he was honest about the friction he encountered early on. The show is meticulous about dialogue. Word-for-word precision is not a preference; it is a requirement. If an actor swaps one phrase for another, even something minor, they run the scene again.

For Moore, this was a direct clash with how he works. His approach is instinctive. He prefers to learn lines close to the moment of performance, keeping himself in an organic, spontaneous state rather than drilling the words until they feel mechanical.

"I don't like to know what I'm going to say next right now," he explained. "I needed to come from an organic place."

On the Raising Kanan set, that approach was not an option. He tried it a couple of times and quickly understood that the culture of the show demanded something different from him.

What followed was a moment of genuine self-awareness. Moore looked around at his scene partners, including Patina Miller, whom he called one of the coldest actors on television, and realized that these performers had been living inside their characters for multiple seasons. They had a relationship with their roles that he was only beginning to build.

"I realized I needed to speed up," he said.

That kind of honest reckoning with where you are versus where your co-stars are is rare to hear, and it made for one of the episode's most compelling moments.

Independent Film, Streaming, and the Long Game

The conversation expanded beyond Raising Kanan when the hosts brought up Moore's independent film One Spoon of Chocolate, which features RJ Cyler and carries the fingerprints of Quentin Tarantino's influence. Moore spoke candidly about the challenges of independent filmmaking, the tension between creative ownership and the commercial muscle needed to get a movie seen at scale. He loves the ownership element of indie work, but he wants the big bang to come with it.

He was realistic about the theatrical window for the film, acknowledging that going up against massive studio releases is a structural disadvantage for independent productions. But he sees the streaming lifecycle as the real opportunity, pointing to how Breaking Bad and Suits both found massive audiences only after landing on Netflix. Lofton shared a similar experience with his own film, which was overshadowed in theaters but later climbed to number one on Netflix across multiple international territories. The message between them was clear: the theatrical opening is no longer the whole story.

Courtroom Chaos and a Conversation Worth Revisiting

No recap of this episode would be complete without mentioning the moment Lofton described attending a pretrial hearing in the Lil Durk case, where prosecutors recited rap lyrics in open court. The image of a white prosecutor reading Durk's bars to a judge had the whole table in stitches, with Lofton admitting he had to physically restrain himself from standing up and shouting objection. It was the kind of unscripted, unfiltered moment that defines Crew Has It as a podcast.

Before signing off, Moore confirmed that Raising Kanan Season 3 premieres June 12th and encouraged fans to follow him on Instagram. Lofton and Paolo promised a part two focused entirely on Breeze and the Kanan storyline once all the episodes have aired. For anyone invested in the Power Universe or simply in honest conversations between people who have put in the work, this episode of Crew Has It is required listening.