First on the agenda their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) followed by local blues legend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo).
They're in a hurry and want to open that same night.
The previous night something else came to town that also loves music. No good will come of this.
CW: lots of violence and era appropriate racial slurs
Ryan Coogler flexes his "one for me" capital and does what's a conventional "gangsters vs. vampires" movie, a meditation on community and the conflicts between them, assimilation, the transcendent power of music, racism in the Jim Crow era, the false promises of religion and just a good old fashioned good time.
It's very much of two halves and the "gangsters return to their hometown and throw a party" is perhaps better realised than "vampires come calling" but it puts so much up there on screen and in its subtext something had to give. There's even an amusing coda which goes beyond a mere mid+end credits scene.
I'm not sure I rate it the absolute stone cold classic that general consensus does but it's proper non franchise, sequel unfriendly original filmmaking that delivers an almost unfiltered creative vision that works across multiple themes and that makes it 9/10. Oh and of course then there's the music...