SFGATE: You released a rap album early in your career, do you have a favorite Bay Area rapper? Ali: Well, I love Hieroglyphics in general. They were so inspiring to so many of us. Lyrically and with their production, they were on par with anybody in New York at the time.

I was wearing out "The Infamous." I was wearing that album out.

Frank Ocean’s new album. It’s very different from his last one. It’s a little melancholy, but it’s one of those albums that I can play all day. What I like about Frank Ocean—and a few of those kind of artists, there aren’t enough of them—is that they are really unique and make music and art on their own terms.

My first moment where I felt like I couldn’t live without this music [laughs] was when I heard Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “The Show” on the radio station in the Bay Area and I’m twelve years old. I sat by the radio station the whole weekend changing the dial from different radio stations to see if they would play “The Show.” I felt like my head was going to explode. I love hip hop.

I just love what Nicholas Britell did with Moonlight. Honestly, I would never pick something I'm involved in like this, but hearing pieces of that music, out of context even, or watching the film, it just brings up so much for me. I know it's a cheat, because I know some of the things that went into the sounds: In the music, they used two characters' hands slapping together as percussion in the score. No one would ever know that. They drew from classical music and slowed it down in order to define more of the angst in the sound and draw a deeper emotional reaction from the audience. It's such a nice mix of classical and hip-hop—a very specific kind of hip-hop—and then all the other sound elements and nuances that help make our story what it is.

This is all music that has a little vibe to it, that I feel has flow.

This is all music that has a little vibe to it, that I feel has flow.

Fall in Love by Slum Village.

Fink has a new album that is out now.

Erykah Badu of course

Mahershala Ali shared this vinyl record on his Instagram post.

Viola Davis is a perfect example of somebody who’s so much better than the parts she has the opportunity to play. She took that eight-minute part [in “Doubt”] and gave her career a second life because people were forced to look at her in a different way.

Art by @deweysaunders

Steven Soderbergh. As a kid, my dad would take me to see indie films when I would visit him in New York. Films that I just wouldn't see growing up in the Bay Area. Seeing Soderbergh's first movies, going to the theater to see them, in their time—the fact that Soderbergh is still around, doing really good work… I would be honored to have an opportunity to work with him.

I love Michelle Williams. I think she's extraordinary.

Especially as an African-American, you need to see yourself reflected in some way. And I've looked at Denzel [Washington].