Malik Yusef Releases 'The Poetry of Luke Skywalker' on Star Wars Day

On Star Wars Day, Malik Yusef put a stamp on May the 4th that lives on the same shelf as the holiday itself. The Chicago poet, songwriter, and founder of Bad Kids Worldwide released The Poetry of Luke Skywalker today, a spoken word collection inspired by the journey of the saga's most recognizable hero. The project is out now exclusively on Share.Stream.

The release marks the official launch of Malik Yusef's Fantasy Series: Live Akshun Figures, a creative model that turns iconic film, TV, and literary characters into self-contained spoken word and musical universes. Luke Skywalker is the first.

Why Malik Yusef chose May the 4th

"May the 4th has always been a day of devotion. Fans around the world declaring their love for a universe that changed everything," Yusef said. "We chose this day because The Poetry of Luke Skywalker is that same kind of devotion, expressed in verse. May the Force be with every word."

The pun turned holiday traces back to a 1979 newspaper ad in The London Evening News congratulating Margaret Thatcher on her election ("May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations."). By 1982, Skywalker Sound's Randy Thom was independently coining it at Lucasfilm. In 2019, the California State Legislature made it official, formally declaring May 4th as Star Wars Day. Disney has run the day at scale since 2013. Yusef chose to plant his flag on the date because the work is built for fans who treat fandom like devotion.

Who is Malik Yusef

Born April 4, 1971 and raised on Chicago's South Side, Malik Yusef is one of the most decorated writers in modern hip hop and a foundational voice in Kanye West's creative world. He is signed to Universal Music Publishing, the largest music publisher on earth, and is a longtime member of G.O.O.D. Music.

A short list of credits:

Co-wrote 15 of 18 tracks on The Life of Pablo Co-wrote 8 of 10 songs on Yeezus Co-wrote 7 songs on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Rolling Stone's Album of the Year Writer, producer, and collaborator on the film Runaway * Writer and artist across Cruel Summer with the G.O.O.D. Music roster

He broke into film as the poetry coach for Larenz Tate in Love Jones, the 1997 New Line drama that took home a Sundance award and three NAACP Image Awards. National audiences saw him on the mic in 2002 with the "I Spit..." performance on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO. Per the release, his accolades now span Grammy, Emmy, Tony, and Peabody recognition.

Bad Kids Worldwide, founded by Yusef, is the platform underneath the new project. It operates as a creative collective and mentorship program for emerging artists across music, screenwriting, design, and live events. The model puts new talent in the room with the people who actually move the industry, and gives those artists ownership of the work they create.

What The Poetry of Luke Skywalker actually is

Yusef and his bad kids wrote and performed the collection together. The work explores what the films themselves never had room to ask. The doubt, the faith, the grief, and the quiet strength of a kid from Tatooine who became the chosen one. The tone is mythic. The center is human.

The blockchain release model

The collection lives on Share.Stream, the platform built by Formless, INC, a Cambridge, Massachusetts company building payments and revenue sharing infrastructure on smart contracts. The pitch is simple. Artists sell directly to fans, and fans share in the upside of the work they support. SHARE is the exclusive distribution partner for Movie Mixtape Radio, and now the exclusive home of the Fantasy Series: Live Akshun Figures.

For Malik Yusef, that distribution choice is the whole point. The Fantasy Series is built to scale across characters, across formats, and across owners. Putting the first chapter on a blockchain native platform tells you where the next chapters are headed.

The Poetry of Luke Skywalker is streaming now, exclusively on Share.Stream.