One-Song-a-Week: Song #47 – Flashing Lights Remix

This week’s video is for the song “Flashing Lights Remix.”

Available on “The O-bama Mixtape” – Click HERE for download information!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

This is one of the songs I wrote, recorded, and made a video for BEFORE I started this whole “One-Song-a-Week” site.  Kanye West’s album, “Graduation,” had dropped a few months prior, and many of the songs from that album were being played prior to a video actually being out for it.

One of the songs I kept hearing at these clubs – and one of the songs I liked the most off the album – was “Flashing Lights.”  It’s a song where he talks about the effect being in the spot light has on his various relationships, and the beat for it was semi-futuristic, souly, and dancable all at once.

I wanted to do a freestyle to it, and did the best I could to find the instrumental for download.  Once I tracked it down, I… okay, so I don’t remember if I ended up actually making any freestyles to it.  What I DO know, is I downloaded the beat around the same time that Britney Spears, now somewhat sane, was having a nervous breakdown.  The paparrazzi has been following her every move for years on end now (this is year number 9) and the pressure of all that, combined with her having had 2 kids and then going through a divorce, was finally catching up to her.

Many people in the news media were, at the time, condeming this girl for the way she was acting.  However, I always tend to look at issues in a different light.  To me, I could understand why she’d finally break down.  Despite the number of videos I’ve done for YouTube (47 so far) and the extreme popularity of the “Obama Milli” song, I am actually a person who enjoys his alone time and privacy.  I could not even begin to imagine how I’d act if a swarm of camera people were trying to follow me from the minute I stepped out my door in the morning until I drove back to my house at night.  That’s like, 10 HOURS of people following me! I don’t even like being around my family members for that long (love y’all to death, though!), let alone complete strangers!

So, I decided to make a version of “Flashing Lights” where I acted as though I was already famous and being stalked by the camera guys.  I also made references to people who had been harrassed by the pap “smears”, such as Anna Nicole (R.I.P,), Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, T.I., Bobby & Whitney, and Dave Chappelle.  It’s one of my shorter songs, but I think it gets my ideas across pretty well!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. Most of the ideas in the first few lines stem from seeing the things the paparazzi puts people through when they are following them around.

2. It’s amazing to me how, if you speak enough about something, it may eventually happen.  I wrote this song a few months BEFORE I dropped “Obama Milli,” yet many of the things I talked about in the song came true.  For example, I have a line where I say, “I once did this for the love/now I’m doing it just because…” sure enough, once the song got popular, I had writer’s block for a while because I felt I had to make songs for everybody else to like, not necessarily myself. I also have a line where I say, “…and now I get jerked/by cousins, who wouldn’t even call before.” I didn’t get jerked around by anyone in the family, but I did have quite a few friends and family who I hadn’t heard from in a while suddenly contact me on Facebook like, “What up, how are things going? By the way, I heard your song in the club/on the radio/on my friend’s ring tone…” followed by the requisited, “don’t forget about me when you make it!” Geez…

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:

I made this video back before I was aware of a “Windows Media Maker” program on my PC.  I did, however, have a program called “Muvee” that came pre-installed with the system as well.  It allowed you to take photographs and/or video footage, load it into the program, choose what transition option you wanted to use, and voila – instant video!

Unfortunately, it was the trial software version.  Meaning, you could only post up to 50 pictures in a video – after that, they would start to repeat themselves until the song ended.

No matter – since I was doing a song about being stalked by the paparazzi, I figured it would be the perfect program to use.  Plus, it had a transition option whereby the pictures would look like they’d been taken by camera guys and put on film.  Awesome!

The pics I used were candid photos of me.  Pretty simple, since those are the kinds of shots paps usually take.  In addition, I wanted to mix in pictures of (a) paparazzi guys at work, and (b) the names of the stars I mention towards the middle-to-end of the song.

All in all, a very, VERY simple video.  I actually posted it up back in March or April of last year on my first YouTube site, but since it’s been taken down (again), I figured it was worth re-posting.  Plus, because the Muvee program is automated, some of the pics didn’t match the words of the song at the right time.  I was able to re-edit the video on my PC via Windows Media Maker, so the video flows much better now!

Some Interesting Video Tidbits:

1. A LOT of my friends show up in this video.  In looking at it, I didn’t know I hung out with that many people!

2. The shots of me in the apartment were the only ones specifically taken for this video.  I wanted shots where I was looking at the paparazzi from my apartment.  The shots were taken when I was still living in my studio apartment in Atlanta, GA. How was I able to take them? Easy – my camera has a timer on it!

3. I don’t remember the original estimated time of editing since, again, I “filmed” it early last year.  Today, though, it only took about an hour, and most of that was just re-adjusting the video so it stretched out to the end of the song!

That’s all for now! Only 5 more videos left to go – see ya next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: APTsongs@hotmail.com

One-Song-a-Week: Song #46 – Fairytale… or Nightmare?

This week’s video is for the song “Fairytale or Nightmare,” produced by Arsha Asteraki.

AVAILABLE ON A.P.T.’S “Welcome 2 Cali” Mixtape! Click HERE for download info!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:

Usually, the first part of the song explanation process starts out with me giving insight into the song.  However, this is one of those rare times where I actually filmed the video BEFORE I had an entire song written.

What happened was, I opened up a new Facebook page soley for my music, and began posting up some of my older videos.  I posted up video number 4, “Smile 4 Dad (Letter 2 My Father),” which is one of my more serious songs.  In looking back on my videos, though, I realized this is one of the few serious songs I’ve done.  Most of my stuff tends to be either hilarious or light-hearted, and I do that because I feel I’m at my best when I’m being funny or sarcastic.  However, since I’m near the end of this year-long project, I figured it would be good to switch things up and do a more dramatic song and video.

Then, while surfing YouTube one day, I clicked on one of the videos suggested to me by the site itself: a video of a remix instrumental from one of the tunes from “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.”   I like when beat-makers use video games as source material for their beats, so I HAD to listen to it.  When I clicked on it… well, the song itself wasn’t posted – just some guy named Arsha Asteraki going on about how people could download the beat in the link next to the video.  I clicked on it, and when I got to the site and heard the beat…

Two words: pure heaven.

It was mixed perfectly.  He sampled the Great Fairy’s music (for non-Zelda fans, it’s the music that plays whenever you get near the Great Fairy’s life-healing pool), added some drums and DJ scratches to it, and made it sound like a hip-hop beat!

I downloaded the instrumental, then left it alone for a while. (I think I had to go out of my apartment for something.)  When I came back to it, I listened to it a couple of times, and a chorus started popping up in my head, something about “fairytales or a nightmare,” which I found brilliant since the song is sampled from a beat used by a Great Fairy, and my song could be about “fairy”-tales.

I decided to focus the song on a break-up.  I don’t know why, but the beat just seemed to take me in that route.  I began writing down a few words here and there, and by Friday afternoon I had half a song together.  However, while in the midst of writing the song, I began thinking about the exact type of video I could shoot for it.

The main catalyst for the video? Simply put: my place was messy.  My roommate went out of town for 5 days, and since I had the place to myself I purposefully allowed for it to get messy. (Hey, five days of no cleaning is FANTASTIC, I don’t care what no one says!)  I figured the place looked similar to how it would look were a person going through a bad breakup, where they just stopped caring about doing ANYTHING, especially cleaning!

What’s cool is that, because I didn’t have the entire song written, I could use the parts of the song I  had written to correlate with actions in some parts of the song, and then go back and write the rest of it in correlation to whatever else I decided to film.  I had the first verse written, so I just filmed according to that.

I filmed parts of the kitchen, table, living room, and bedroom that were messy, then filmed myself lying down on my futon bed moping.  After getting up and pondering what went wrong in the relationship, I go to brush my teeth, then attempt to clean my kitchen and write a new song, but with no luck.  Finally, I take my frustrations out on… something… lying around the apartment before breaking down, crying, then going back to my room.

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. The pizza box was courtesy of Lil’ Ceasar’s pizza I had just gotten that day.

2. Part of the reason my room was so messy – and part of the reason I was wearing swimming trunks – is because my roommate, prior to leaving town, had lost the laundry room key, and I didn’t feel like lugging my laundry down the block, so stuff just piled up.  Don’t worry, I’m doing laundry today!

3. Most of the shots I took for this video were cut WAY down.  There’s an extended cut of me brushing my teeth, staring out the window, and sitting at my computer that were about 40 seconds long each, but wittled down to less than 10 seconds.  It’s better to over-film than under do it!

4. Me attacking the… thing that I attack in this video was spontaneous.  As a result of me filming it, though, I had to add an “angry” part to the song to make that part of the video more effective.

5. At the end of the video, I go to my room and close the door to go to sleep, while it’s still daytime.  As the credits roll, it looks like it’s nighttime.  In actuality, it’s a post-edit effect of an earlier shot, only I gave it the “Night Effect” lighting.  God, I love having a MAC!

6. Editing time for this video: 2 hours, from start to finish.  God, I LOVE HAVING A MAC!!  This video would have taken me at least 5 to 6 hours on my slow-ass P.C.!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

Once I had the video shot, I went back and did tweaks on the song.  I kept the first verse the same, but I had started on the second verse prior to filming, and the opening parts sounded too slow-paced to me.  The first verse was purposefully slow-pased, like I was in a daze over being broken up with, but I didn’t want the whole song to sound that way because then it just starts sounding boring.  So, I scrapped whatever it was I had, and changed the words and style of how they were said so the delivery would be more like, “okay, I’m starting to realize what really happened here and I’m angry about it.”

As the second verse hits the 12 bar, the beat changes into a frenzy-sounding remix, and I wanted the emotions of the song to match with the sound at that time.  Thus, my idea to go completely crazy (also matching with what I do in the video), then calm back down when the beat goes back to normal.  And, of course, since this is a “broken heart” song, I added some crying in for good measure.  Ah yes, all those years of theatre classes are finally being put to use!

This song is beautiful.  The beat sounds good, and, with the clarity of my new mic, the words sound great as well!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. Like I said before, I wrote out the first verse first.  Although most of the second verse was scrapped, the “angry” part of the verse was actually completed before the other parts were.

2. I didn’t actually know what angle I was going to write the song towards until near the end of the first verse.  I knew it would be about a break-up, but I added the “cheating” element to make the song more dramatic.

That’s all for now – only 6 more videos left to go! See ya next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: APTsongs@hotmail.com

One-Song-a-Week: Song #45 – Y’all Haters Should Know

This week’s video is for the song, “Y’all Haters Should Know!”

FREE Download! Click here: http://www.4shared.com/file/93085760/2be68933/APT_-_Yall_Haters_Should_Know.html

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

This is one of my songs where I had the chorus LONG before I had a beat.

To be honest, I don’t even know how I came up with the chorus.  All I know is, for the longest time I’ve been walking around saying, “Now you can tell by the way a brotha like to rooooll/A.P.T., homeboy, I be in control/Y’all haters should know, y’all haters should know, y’all haters (y’all haters) y’all haters should know…”  I liked the chorus enough, but I never really had a song to go with it.  I would freestyle off lyrics to match with the chorus, and they’ve always been different, but I never really stopped to write anything down and make it into a song.

Fast-forward to January 2009: I moved to California, and in just two days I was already immensely more happy with my new living situation.  Whereas before I had been stuck in the dead cold of an east coast winter, my first 10 days in Cali consisted of a climate with 75 to 80 degree temperature.

It was around this time that I decided to take out the ol’ microphone and see if I could come up with some tunes.  I wanted to make a song I could place on my website as a FREE download, so I figured it would be good of me to take a popular beat and see if I could freestyle on it.  I tried to think of songs that were popular at the moment, but I really don’t listen to radio much anymore because… well, I don’t have a radio!

I went on YouTube to look up songs, and somehow came across Paul Wall.  I think I may have looked up Nelly’s “Grillz” song as a possible song for me to rap over (which featured Paul Wall), and in the side of the YouTube bar was a song by Paul Wall called “Break ‘Em Off” from his second album, “Get Money, Stay True.”  I had never heard the album or the song… but there was a legit music video with it, so I decided to click on it.

When I heard the song… well, the song was just “okay,” but the beat… the beat was INCREDIBLE!!  I started thinking of words to the song right away – always a good sign when you’re looking for a beat to use – and as I was freestyling, that old chorus that I’ve had in my head for over 2 years suddenly popped into my head…

And it fit!

So, I sat down at the table and started writing.  I wanted the tone of the first verse to be sing-songy, something that would flow along with the beat.  As for the second verse, I wanted to talk a lil’ bit about what it’s been like to live out here in CA.  Sun, palm trees, warm weather, girls, parties, car rides… it’s all good over here on the west!

This is one of those songs where the content is not necessarily all that important.  Yes, I know it’s probably a rap sin to admit it, but not every song an artist makes has to be about something.  Some of the most well-known rap songs (i.e. “It Takes Two,” “Gettin’ Jiggy With It”) weren’t necessarily the most lyrical or the most prolific, but were just plain fun.  And that’s all I set out to do with this song!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. This is the second-to-last song I recorded with my previous microphone, the H2 Zoom (the last song being “Goodbye Bush (Na Na Na)”).  I now have a new mic that has better sound quality.  Still miss the ol’ mic, though!

2. The opening part where I shout out “I made it out to Cali!” was ad-libbed.  I was really just happy to be out here.  And I still am!

3. In the first verse, I rap about how I live everything I say in my raps, and that if I’m not, it doesn’t matter because I’ll just lie about it until it becomes true.  It’s funny, but it also makes a point: a LOT of rappers start out rapping about what they WISH to have, hoping they’ll eventually have it.  Unlike some people I don’t have a problem with this, as I believe in the power of speaking what you want.  If I want a car but don’t have it, I’ll just keep saying, “check out my car” until I have a car for people to check out!

4. My favorite line in the song is the last one in the first verse, and the last two in the second verse.  Hmm, I guess that’s 3 lines!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT

Since I talk about being in California, I wanted to do a video that showed off some of the cooler parts of where I live.

It just so happened that I had an out-of-town visitor stop in this week for 4 days, and wanted to go to some of the cooler parts of town.  So, I carried my camera along wherever we went (when I could remember it) and did what I call “stock footage” filming (i.e. filming a bunch of stuff for potential video use later).

In the video, you’ll see a lot of shots of Universal City walk; Chinatown; some of the underground train route art work; and the freeway, thanks in part to one of my other friends who was able to give me and my out-of-towner a ride back from the airport.  I also took a few pics in these places that I threw into the video.

Once my guest left, I analyzed my footage and realized I might want to add parts in the video with me actually mouthing the words to the song.  I had to go drop off a job application near my apartment on Saturday, so I decided to film myself walking along the sidewalk while saying parts of the verse, and later, filmed myself walking around a parking garage saying the other.

All in all, it’s an okay video.  It’s not one that has a plot to it or anything – it’s more like “vacation footage with a soundtrack” – but I still like it!

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. You may be asking, “How were you able to mouth the words without using an iPod?”  Answer: my phone records up to a minute of sound, so I recorded the first verse, then had to record the second verse.  During filming, I carried the camera with one hand and used the other to hold the phone.  This is why you don’t see my other hand in the footage!

2. The freeway shots with the fencing in it were shot while I was riding the train back from the airport.

3. The candy lady and the child flying up and down in the air tube were both shot in Universal Studio City Walk. In fact, most of the shots with restaurants, monkeys, etc. were shot there.

4. Whilst on the train to another location, I noticed there was a guy on there playing the guitar.  I turn to look… and he had a green mohawk!  At that point, I didn’t even care if it made sense to film him – i KNEW he had to be in the video, ’cause you don’t see that every where!

5. Estimated video edit time: 3 hours.  Add on 2 more hours for publishing because, after I did it the first time, I noticed that some of the footage parts I had silenced were making noise.  I notice my MAC does this quite often, and it is rather annoying, considering my PC didn’t do that.  I had to cut the last part of the video off, publish it by itself with no noise, then tack it back on to the original version.  Eh, it’s a hassle, but the MAC still makes editing easier than the PC, so it’s a trade-off!

That’s all for now – only 7 more videos left to go! See ya next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: APTsongs@hotmail.com

MySpace: www.MySpace.com/NotoriousAPT

One-Song-a-Week: Song #44 – Hey There, Rihanna (Hey There Delilah Parody)

This week’s music video is for the song “Hey There, Rihanna,” a parody of Plain White T’s “Hey There, Delilah!”

FREE Song Download – Click HERE: http://www.zshare.net/audio/56714580ccf85022/

FREE Video Download – Click HERE: http://www.4shared.com/file/91725124/8c40cdac/APT_Video_44_-_Hey_There_Rihanna.html

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

On February 8, Chris Brown and Rihanna, two R&B/Pop starlets with a lot of radio hits on their hands, had other kinds of hits going on whilst en route from a Grammy party at Clive Davis’ house.  Details are still coming out about the incident a month later, but the short version goes like this: they got into a fight over Rihanna reading a text message from another woman off of Chris’ phone, which lead to a verbal argument, which lead to Mr. Brown punching, biting, and badly beating down Rihanna.  After almost choking her to death, police were called by listeners who heard Rihanna’s cries for help, and yada yada yada…

This past week, Chris Brown went to court and was formally charged with the attack, as well as making possible death threats towards Rihanna (i.e. “I’ll kill you when we get home!”)  It should be noted that Chris Brown grew up in a home where he saw his step-dad beat on his mom regularly, so it’s not too much of a surprise that he had the ability to go off like he did.

What IS surprising – though, apparently, it’s really NOT all that surprising to psychologist – is that, despite the very, very harsh beating Rihanna took from Chris… she still wants him back!  According to all the news I’ve seen on this story, he contacted her 9 days after the assult to apologize, and tell her that he (a) was going to get help to deal with his problems, and (b) that he still loved her.  (Really, Chris?  Were you feeling the same way when you were screwing other girls behind her back??)

I had so much info in my head about the incident that I couldn’t believe she’d actually go back to him!  At the same time, this kind of thing happens all the time, and, since I don’t know Rihanna (we don’t exactly run in the same circles, what with me having had ONE hit song, and her having had… gee, I’ve lost count), I couldn’t exactly meet up to talk to her about her decision.

But I COULD put it into musical form and hope she hears it!

It just so happens that, in my quest for songs, I parodied the words “Hey there, Rihanna,” a LOOONG time ago.  It’s what I do whenever a hit song comes out – I take the words and occasionally bastardize them for fun.  It doesn’t mean I’ll make a full song out of it (a la “Obama Milli”), but it does stick in my mind.  With the Rihanna idea, I never made a full song out of it because, while it sounded catchy for the first 3 words, I didn’t really have a song to go behind it.

And then this incident happened.  And suddenly, I had material!

Before I made the song, I checked on YouTube to see if anyone else had made a song parody using the same beat.  BTW, the song parodies The Plain White T’s 2006(7?) hit “Hey There, Delilah,” and it had the perfect melody to go along with the sentiments I wanted to say in the song.  Anyway, someone on YouTube had actually made a parody with the same title (booooo!), but it was about how much Rihanna sucked, and not about this incident (um… yay?).

Amazingly, there are a LOT of parodies for this particular tune, so I feel kinda late making a song to it.  Still, as Weird Al has proven time and time again, if your parody is good, it doesn’t matter how much distance is between the original and your version!

I was going to re-make the beat from scratch, and was about half-way through doing so… but it was taking up too much of my time.  So, I found a karaoke version of the beat, downloaded it, placed it into my Garage Band program, and viola!

As for the song itself, I mentioned all things associated (so far) with the case: Rihanna shacking up in Miami, her face being black and blue, mentioning the text message incident that started this whole thing… not to mention the references to Chris Brown being like Mike Tyson, O.J., and how his career is over (though, as R. Kelly has proven, I could be wrong on this assumption as well).  Once I was done recording it, I sent a few copies out to close friends just to get their take on it.  So far, it’s been pretty good!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. I mention her being in Miami because, at the time I started thinking of this song, she had been hiding out there in one of Diddy’s houses for a while.  I think she’s actually in L.A. now with her boy-toy Chris, but “Miami” and “Grammy” rhymed better.

2. Even though this song is about a serious subject, I wanted to inject some humor into some of the lines. Thus, I mention her covering her bruises with “Cover Girl” mascara (since she does ads for them) and the line about Chris being a biter and this “not being Street Fighter.”

3. There’s a line where I say to Rihanna, “Your giant 5-head must be cracked.”  She has a big forehead, and people joke that a person with big foreheads have “five-” heads.  Get it?

4. At the end of the song, I beg Rihanna to “please come be with me.” In reality, I couldn’t date her – I’ve heard how needy and/or bossy she can be and… well, let’s just say, if the rumors of her starting this whole thing are true, I definitely couldn’t date a woman ready to start an argument about dumb stuff!  Still, it sounds good in song-form!

5. This is the first song I’ve posted up where I recorded it using my BRAND NEW studio mic.  As you can hear, the clarity of my words is MUCH better, and everything sounds so crisp.  I love it!!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:

The basic idea was to do a mocking of The Plain White T’s video – all the guy did was sit in one place and play the song on his guitar while split-screen action was going on in other panels on the screen.  2 problems: I don’t know how to do the split screen thing yet, and I don’t have a guitar.

Oh well!  It’s called “making due with what you have.”

What I had on hand was an umbrella.  I decided to use it as my guitar because Rihanna had a number one song called “Umbrella,” so I knew people would get the joke.  I also have a MAC computer now, and, because it has a built-in mic and I was recording the video in my room, I decided to use it to shoot the video!  The result is picture clarity unlike any I’ve had in my videos (except for the “Fly Chick” video, where my friend’s footage was clear because – duh – she filmed her parts using a MAC!).

I shot the “guitar” footage from two angles: first, the front angle, with the computer directly in front of me; and second, from the side angle, where I’d still be facing forward and not looking directly into the camera.  Why?  I dunno – it’s what they do in all those other videos where guys are playing guitars, so I needed one of those shots, too!

After I shot the footage, I got on the internet and looked for pictures and/or footage of Chris/Rihanna that I could use.  I found some nice pics of them both (relatively speaking) and some pretty cool footage from news stories and other entertaining things.  Once I did that, I left my aparmtent and took a walk down the block to Wal-greens, where I went to buy condoms (don’t ask) and use my Kodak camera to film myself “reading” a magazine article about Rihanna going back to Chris Brown.  It was the PERFECT magazine to use, too, since I have lines in the song that pertain to her going back to him!

Once I got all the footage I needed, I loaded it up onto the MAC, made myself some soup, and edited the heck outta this thing!  The result is a video that I feel very proud of!

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. For the part of the song where I talk about this not being Street Fighter, I recorded footage from a video made by… 50 Cent?!? He’s been going back and forth with Rick Ross lately, and posted up cartoons of Rick Ross as “Officer Ricky.”  Cartoon #3 dealt with the Officer going after Chris Brown, and has hilarious footage of Chris Brown and Rihanna in Street Fighter mode.  I HAD to get it!

2. The thing I’m sitting on in the video is my BRAND NEW FUTON, which I just got a few days ago!

3. Shout outs to TMZ, who provided the WORLD with the pics of Rihanna’s badly beaten face.  Also, I forget which site I got them at, but those blood splatters really are from the fight – her blood splattered on the car AND on her outfit?!? And she STILL wants to be with this dude???

4. For the shot of me in Wal-Greens, I simply placed my camera on top of a product box that was sitting right next to the magazine section.  Like I’ve said before, I ALWAYS GET THE SHOT I WANT.

5. Estimated Time for editing: I’d say 7 hours, but my friend Daren kept calling me, and I’d end up talking to him for 30 to 40 minutes at a time.  So, I’d say about 3 to 4 solid hours.

That’s all for now – download the song/video, re-post it up, and request it at radio!  Only 8 more videos left to go – see ya next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: APTsongs@hotmail.com
MySpace: www.MySpace.com/NotoriousAPT

Obama Milli: The Edited Version

Above: A video explaining my reasoning for making an edited version of “Obama Milli”… 9 months later.

As the video above states, there is now an “edited” version of “Obama Milli” available.  The original version didn’t have any cursing in it, or anything I necessarily thought was too racy… but I got a messages from adults telling me how much their kids love the song, but some of them couldn’t play the whole thing for them due to certain parts of the song that are more “adult” than others (i.e. me talking about wanting to make love to Michele, or using the words “bastard,” “prick” or – oddly enough – “negros always ‘causin’ problems”).

Luckily for me, I finally got a microphone that has REALLY good sound quality.  Since I needed to test it out anyway, I figured I could kill 2 birds with one stone by re-recording the “Obama Milli” song as a means of testing out the mic.  And it sounds great!

So, if you like the song but want one the kiddies can listen to without you cringing, here is the link:

http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=237222

Enjoy!

-A.P.T.

One-Song-a-Week: Song #43 – The Great Black Hope

This week’s music video is for the song “The Great Black Hope,” off the album of the same name!

AVAILABLE ON A.P.T.’S “THE GREAT BLACK HOPE” ALBUM! Click HERE for more info!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

I’m a big fan of Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report.”  It’s a political satire show that’s basically a mocking of Bill O’ Reiley’s “The O’Reiley Factor.”

It’s opening theme song is a nice rock and roll riff that simply jams.  I’m always looking for tunes to sample that aren’t being used by everybody else, and I wanted to take his show’s theme song and see if I could make it into a rap tune.  I couldn’t find the tune downloadable anywhere, so I used my Mom’s sound recorder on her computer to record the theme from the online site, and transferred it to my laptop’s Fruitly Loops program.

This was about a year and a half ago.  I had the beat, the first, and even came up with the chorus and title – “The Great Black Hope”… but beyond that, I didn’t have the rest of the song written at, nor did I know what direction I wanted the song to go in.  So, as I do with all songs that I can’t seem to figure out, I put it on the back-burner and didn’t write anything to it for a while.  I’d listen to the beat occasionally trying to get ideas, but couldn’t come up with anything…

Fast-forward to November 2008: After I released the “The Next Black President” mixtape, I started thinking up songs for my next album.  I knew that, with Barack Obama winning the election, this would be a perfect time to release an album titled “The Great Black Hope.”  I already had the beat, chorus, and first verse for it, but I still didn’t know how to finish it up.  I literally went weeks trying to think up lyrics for a second verse, and nothing I wrote seemed to come out right.

Finally, as my self-imposed deadline for the album’s release date was coming, I had to buckle down and come up with something.  So I started thinking and thinking, and I figured that with the given song title, it would be good of me to explain WHY I consider myself “The Great Black Hope.”  So, I decided to mention a lil’ bit about having been through the struggle of trying to make it in the music biz, as well as having enough status to be a model of success and hope for those that haven’t made it as far.  Granted, I’m not uber famous by any means, but I HAVE gotten enough attention to where I am able to actively make progress towards my goals (verses just talking about them and getting no where due to lack of momentum).

Once I figured that part out, writing the second verse of the song was easy.  Once the song was done, I went back and added some rise sounds to the beat, plus – since I wanted the song to have a hype feel to it – I added in cheering audience sounds (which I got off a sound FX CD).  Once everything was completed, I took a listen to the song, and knew: THIS was definitely a GREAT album-opening song!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. There’s a part of the song where a door bell rings.  I didn’t have the sound effect, so, since I was visiting my Mom at the time, I had her stand outside and ring the bell while I held up a microphone next to where the door bell sound comes out.

2. The cheering sound only lasted so long, so I had to re-loop it over and over to fit the whole song.

3. My favorite line: “A rap sensai, you can call me Splinter.”  Seems like an old-school reference, don’t it? Dang, I’m gettin’ old!

INSIGHT INTO A MUSIC VIDEO:

I had the video idea for this one last week, but didn’t have time to film it.  It’s very simple: Since there is cheering being heard throughout the song, I thought it fitting to make the video similar to those “Karaoke” games available for PS3, X-Box 360 and Nintendo Wii.

Shooting for the video was pretty easy – I hung one of my more decorative blankets where my curtain “should” be, and mimed the song at 2 different angles (though I only ended up using one of them for the majority of the video).  I was originally going to also use myself as the person playing/singing along to the game… but quite honestly, I didn’t want to shoot yet another video where I’m playing more than one person.

Luckily, I happened to have access to a puppet (can’t reveal WHY yet), and decided to use it as the character singing along to the game. I had to film it at an angle where my arm and body couldn’t be seen.

The longest part of the editing process was typing in the scrolling lyrics.  I had to make sure they lined up with the wording of the song.  I actually had to revert back to my good ol’ PC to add the words in, and I also added in the watercolor effect for the parts where I’m singing so I’d look more video gamey.  Once I transferred it to my MAC, I also added in some high-color green effects, along with some other effects to give my look some variation.  Add in the music track with the puppet footage, and voila – another hot video by me, A.P.T.!

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits

1. I did the shots of me singing close-up to give the impression that I was in front of a stage curtain.  In actuality, I filmed it in my room

2. Mouthing a puppet is hard work!  I had to have it sing along to the song, which is almost 4 minutes worth of mouthing words.  About 2.5 minutes in, my hand started getting tired, and I had to re-adjust it so I could finish.  Luckily, I could just leave those parts out.

3. The thing sitting up in the puppet’s lap is my studio mic.  In retrospect, a person wouldn’t use a studio mic when playing a video game… but who cares?!?

4. Estimated editing time: about 5 hours.  Not too bad, considering I also filmed it today!

That’s all for now – only 9 more music videos left to go!  See ya next week!

-A.P.T.