In about 10 days, the movie world will be blessed with the highly anticipated Black Panther movie that’s been the talk of Hollywood for months now. Before the movie hits theaters, the official soundtrack album Black Panther: The Album is set to drop this Friday (Feb 9) and it’s executive produced by Kendrick Lamar.

In a new interview with NPR, the film’s director Ryan Coogler (Creed + Fruitvale Station) talked about the equally-anticipated soundtrack and how Kendrick went from planning to do just a few songs, to creating an entire project.

See some excerpts below from the interview and be sure to grab Black Panther: The Album this Friday with features from Kendrick Lamar, most of TDE, Travi$ Scott, The Weeknd and many others.

Ryan Coogler on meeting Kendrick and Top Dawg:

“I’ve been a massive Kendrick fan ever since I first heard him, since his mixtapes, and I’ve been trying to track him down,” Coogler says. “Eventually I caught up with him a couple years ago — first with Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith, who runs his label, and then later on sat down with him and Kendrick and just spoke about much his music affected me. He talked about my movies that he had seen, and we said if the opportunity comes, we’d love to work with each other on something.”

Ryan Coogler on the album coming together and Marvel’s support:

And to Marvel’s credit, they really supported the idea of getting some songs from him. At first, he was just going to do a few songs for the film, and then he came in and watched quite a bit of the movie, and the next thing I know, they were booking a studio and they were going at it.”

Sounwave on working on Black Panther: The Album during the “DAMN” tour:

“[During] The DAMN. Tour, we probably came up with 50 percent of it — the production, the hooks and ideas,” Sounwave tells NPR Music’s Sidney Madden. “When we got back from the tour in September, that’s when we were able to execute our ideas and reach out to people we respect and whatnot … kind of just put the stamp on it. So, I want to say those two months was the most vital on that tour, in terms of creative process.”

Sounwave on Marvel’s support of hip-hop:

“I think it’s only right,” Sounwave says. “The movie’s not set in 1910, or the 1960s when Black Panther first came out — it’s set in today. There’s ‘today’ moments happening in the movie, so we want the whole soundtrack to sound like that too. I think it was a perfect marriage for us to blend the two worlds.”