Hassan Johnson
Hassan Johnson is a film and television actor whose work has been dominated by cop and/or gang-oriented projects. His first role came on television on a 1995 episode of the crime drama "New York Undercover," followed later that year by his film debut, playing Skills in Spike Lee's "Clockers," a drama about Brooklyn street-drugs pushers which was adapted from the novel by Richard Price. In 1998, Johnson starred alongside big-name rappers Nas and DMX in the crime drama "Belly," a story about two gangsters who come to spiritual revelations, and, as with his prior projects, the film was based in New York. In 2002, Johnson initiated the character of Roland 'Wee-Bey' Brice, a drug dealer on HBO's widely lauded, Baltimore-based crime series, "The Wire," enjoying a 19-episode role that recurred over the course of the series' five-season run. In 2009, Johnson capitalized on his "Wire" cred by earning a part amidst the star-studded cast in Antoine Fuqua's "Brooklyn's Finest," in which three otherwise unrelated Brooklyn-based police officers come together in dealing with a crime; the film featured such top-bill names as Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, and Wesley Snipes, among others. Continuing to gravitate to rap-related projects, Johnson was cast in rapper Sticky Fingaz' 2009 crime musical, "A Day in the Life," and then in 2010, he landed a supporting role in the crime thriller "Gun," which starred and was written by the entrepreneurial-minded Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson.