'The Land' director talks working with Nas and Erykah Badu to tell an untold story of Cleveland

While filming The Land, a movie about four young skateboarders in Cleveland who end up dealing drugs, director Steven Caple Jr. didn't want to cut any corners.

The director, who grew up near downtown Cleveland, was sure to shoot only in the city's roughest neighborhoods.

"I wanted it to be as authentic as possible," he told Mashable. "So we shot in tough neighborhoods -- really tough neighborhoods."

So tough, in fact, that the cast and crew would often hear gunshots mere feet away from the set. They were forced to shut down one shoot at a festival when someone shot live rounds into the air. And as they were leaving, one festival goer was shot.

"These are real issues in these neighborhoods, and the whole purpose of the film was to really capture that," Caple said.

While Caple's seen several movies shot in Cleveland -- Spider-Man and The Avengers, for example -- very few are actually set there. And most stories of life on the streets, Caple says, are told from one of three cities: New York, Compton, or Chicago.

"I wanted people to see what I saw," he said.

While Caple didn't grow up skateboarding -- he based that storyline off of two kids he met in Los Angeles who started selling drugs while seeking pro sponsorships -- much of the movie is based on his life and the people he grew up with.

He sees himself in Boobie, the resident "kid with the conscience" played by Ezri Walker, who still finds himself in trouble. His father, who used to be a drug addict, inspired Uncle Steve (Kim Coates), a recovering junkie who's close with Turquoise, a crack-addled prostitute played by Erykah Badu.

Caple says it's "like therapy" to put his past onto the screen.

"I wanted to put a piece of me on the table," he said. "I always wanted to tell that kind of story and give people a sense of my background and who I am, without being preachy."

Nas not only executive produced the film, but also produced its soundtrack, which features several original new songs. There's MGK's "Dopeman," a foreboding track about drug dealing and Nas and Erykah Badu's "This Bitter Land, which blends Badu's signature soul and Nas' potent lyricism for a powerful statement on life in the ghetto.

Caple says there's a good reason a soundtrack full of hip-hop is an apt accompaniment to The Land: "Hip-hop has a soul."

"It's a genre that everyone can relate to and pull different parts from," he said. "Having artists like Nas, Erykah Badu and Machine Gun Kelly, they all speak to different audiences but at the same time have something to say... it's just the feeling and the mood and what it does to people when you start to hear it."