Rap group Goodie Mob become executive producers on the film Thomasville

Goodie Mob have joined the award-winning short film Thomasville as executive producers, AllHipHop reported on August 9, their first move into film production. The Atlanta hip-hop group, made up of T-Mo, Khujo, Big Gipp and CeeLo Green, is backing filmmaker Alex Woodruff's drama, which has already won Best Drama at the San Jose International Short Film Festival and Best African American Film at the Cleveland International Film Festival.

Thomasville unfolds inside a rain-soaked car outside an Atlanta hospital, where a young man and his ailing father confront a fractured history tied to the demolished Thomasville Heights housing project in Southeast Atlanta. The film stars Jay Jones from P-Valley and Stephen Ruffin from Snowfall, and takes on the city's Red Dog police era, gentrification and generational trauma.

T-Mo said the group connected with how the film puts a spotlight on public housing through the Thomasville Heights neighborhood, adding that "the film's storytelling aligns with messages we've put out through our music for over 30 years."

Woodruff, an Atlanta native with deep family roots in Georgia, wrote and directed the film as what he called "my love letter to Atlanta and my family." He said Goodie Mob's history of holding "an unflinching mirror up to the City of Atlanta" made them the ideal partners for a film built on the same mission.

Goodie Mob's move mirrors a broader trend of hip-hop artists expanding into independent film, AllHipHop noted. The group helped launch the Dirty South movement in the 1990s and helped elevate Atlanta to a global rap capital through socially conscious lyricism, part of the same run of hip-hop artists this month reaching beyond music, alongside Special Ed's own move into youth mentorship through the Hip-Hop Education Center.