Idris Elba, best known for his role as Stringer Bell in the hit HBO series The Wire, is currently working on his parallel career as a musician. Elba released a remix of the song “Shutdown” by Skepta, including a rap about his role as Stringer Bell, as well as his work portraying Nelson Mandela and detective John Luther on the BBC miniseries Luther.
The remix rose to the #1 spot on the Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 list, with over 250,000 plays since its release yesterday. Listen below:
Elba was just announced as a performer at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, and fans in attendance should hope to hear more Stringer Bell-inspired music during the set. He previously released an album called Mi Mandela, which was inspired by his role as Nelson Mandela, and has plans for more character albums.
“[Mi Mandela is] part of a series of albums that I’m going to make called character pieces, character albums… I take the character that I played and sort of explain the journey playing him, and the journey of the character, in music. What would he have listened to, what might have influenced him, what influenced me as an actor … This suddenly becomes these new songs, these new ways to write songs and [to] express [the] emotion attached to a character.”
You can watch that interview in full below: