Well, it looks like this “One-Song-a-Week” project is coming to a close very soon. I only have ONE more video to film and I will have put out 52 videos in 50 weeks. (Of course, given how much of a stickler I am for actually following through on a concept, I’ll probably do 2 bonus videos, but they won’t be nearly as good).
Me, being the nostalgic person I am, decided to take a look back at the entries I’ve done on this site over the past year. In doing so, I came across one of my very first entries called “UPDATE: Music + Where I’m At Now,” where I talked about my then “current” status of things in the hopes of comparing it to where I’d be a year from then.
I’m SO glad I did that!
In looking at my now “current” status, things have improved greatly for me, and I’m glad I’m able to have a comparison to where I once was. For those of you curious as to what type of changes have occurred, what follows is a “back then/right now” comparison. Check it out:
MY LIFE “BACK THEN” (As typed by “Previous Me”, Circa May/June 2008):
* I live in Atlanta, GA.
* I work at a job that I loathe. Okay, I don’t really loathe it – I loathe having a job in the first place because it makes me feel like a slave to a schedule and payment plan. I’d rather be making money via my creativity.
* I have no girlfriend. I have girls I date, but I haven’t really found “the One” yet.
* My income for the moment: I have enough money coming in to pay my 3 bills – apartment, phone, internet/cable – and to finance my progressive steps towards my dream.
* My current recording “studio” consist of: my Studio apartment, my bootleg Fruity Loops program, my laptop, a $200 H2 Zoom studio microphone, and a set of studio headphones I bought from a guy off Craig’s List. Very nice sound, too!
MY LIFE “RIGHT NOW” (As typed by “Current Me,” Circa April/May 2009):
*I live in Van Nuys, CA.
*I work from home, which I LOVE. The fact that I don’t have to deal with other people on a regular basis is GREAT, and I’m making money via my creativity.
*I had a girl I was dating when I moved to D.C., but she’s in law school there, and now I’m over here. I miss her everyday, and always look forward to seeing her when I get the chance!
*My income for the moment is actually less than what I was making as a server. However, since I work at home, there’s no commute money to pay, no clothes to buy for work, no gas money. My soon-to-be future income, though, will be GREAT.
*My current recording “studio” consist of: my 2 bedroom apartment (I have a roommate, but he’s gone most of the day); my Magix Studio 14 program (on my PC), my bootleg Fruity Loops program (on my PC – still good for making beats!), my laptop, my iMac Computer, the Garageband Sound Studio (on my iMac), my C-Media USB Microphone (i.e. professional studio quality mic)… and a set of headphones I bought from a guy off Craig’s List back in 2007 that I managed NOT to lose. Still has nice sound, too!
*Oh yeah – I still use my Kodak 6.1 megapixel camera for most of my filming, but my iMac also has a built in HD camera which I’ve used quite a few times. It’s nice to have options, people!
And that’s pretty much it! All in all, this experiment has definitely exceeded my expectations, but I’ll talk more about that once I’ve posted up my final video. See ya on Sunday!
And now, I present to you the newest A.P.T. mixtape…
“Welcome 2 Cali: The Mixtape!”
Featuring the Asher Roth parody, “I Hate Grad School!” Includes unreleased A.P.T. tracks as well as freestyles and newer songs like “I’m The Realest” feat. Jay-Z and “Y’all Haters Should Know!”
The last mixtape I released was “The Next Black President (a.k.a. Back on My Grind)” back in November. 2 months after it was released, I released my second “official” album, “The Great Black Hope.” Prior to those two albums, I released “The O-bama Mixtape” as well as “The A.P.T. LP,” and I re-released the album I made back in college, “The A.P.T. EP (This is ONLY a Demo).”
The only reason I released these albums was because I figured they’d give me enough material to satisfy the needs of my “One-Song-a-Week” year-long project. And it did – technically, with the combined amount of songs on all the albums I could have easily pulled from them to make the 52 videos I needed to make.
But… after the release of video 43 (“The Great Black Hope,”) I started coming up with new songs. Actually, it started before then – when I settled in to my apartment in Van Nuys, CA, I was listening to beats on line, and came across a Paul Wall beat that I used to make “Y’all Haters Should Know.” It was in this song that I first shouted out, “I made it out to Caliiiiii!”
Then, I sold my mic because I was low on rent money, and couldn’t record anything for a while. Which was fine because I was starting to focus energy on things outside music that would be financially beneficial to me in the future. However, as I approached video 43 and started thinking about what other songs I would use for videos, I realized that, although I had songs to choose from, I couldn’t think of videos to necessarily go with them.
Then, I finally got a brand NEW mic – one that sounds 3 times better than my old one – and I got in the mood to record again. It was around this same time that the whole “Rihanna getting ‘allegedly’ beat up by Chris Brown’” incident happened – just in time for me to make a parody song about it for video 44, “Hey There Rihanna.” (Which, BTW, is NOT on the mixtape since Rihanna seems to have finally gotten enough sense to leave him. At least the song was timely!)
Then, I started writing songs for my other project (which I still can’t talk about quite yet). In the course of finding beats, I would occasionally find one that I couldn’t use on said project, but that I DID think of lyrics for that I could use as my rap persona. An example would be the beat used for video 46, “Fairytale or Nightmare?” It’s a beat that remixes the Fairy music from “Legend of Zelda” – clearly I couldn’t make a song to it and sell it w/o Nintendo’s permission, but I COULD make a song and give it away for free!
And since I was nearing the end of the project, I figured that any songs I made from then on out could just be given away for free, one at a time, without me having to put together a new compilation of material….
…but then, because I was putting out new songs, people started asking me: “So…. are you going to put out any more mixtapes soon?”
Dang… why did someone have to ask that question!
Truthfully, I didn’t think anyone would want another mixtape from me. I mean, dang, I’ve already put out 5 albums in the course of less than a year, and didn’t want to over-saturate people with more music. At the same time, though, it wasn’t like I didn’t have material I couldn’t put together. In the span of 5 years I’ve recorded freestyles, songs, and other stuff that I haven’t released. Plus, it’s nice to know that people still want to hear new stuff from me – I’m still amazed to this day that, even with the “Obama Milli” song finally dying down a bit in hype, people still check for my music!
So, I decided to make a new mixtape called “Welcome 2 Cali!”
This mixtape contains newly written songs released as videos within the past few weeks, as well as one song (“Back 2 The Future”) I released as video 6 yet never put on any album or mixtape. Also included are my “paperstyles” (freestyles that are written down and recorded right away) I released right after “The O-bama Mixtape” came out, and 2 “freestyles” I recorded (one of them last year, and the other was recorded when I still lived at my Mom’s house back in 2005).
And of course, I also have new songs I recorded, including my newest parody, “I Hate Grad School,” a take on Asher Roth’s “I Love College,” and “Welcome 2 Cali,” which takes Lil’ Wayne’s “Prom Queen” beat to make a totally original song (i.e. no parodying him THIS time!).
So, check it out! It’s a GREAT mixtape, and a wonderful way for me to end this project on a GREAT note!
Track Listing for “Welcome 2 Cali: The Mixtape” (Highlighted links have videos for the song!):
This week’s video is for the song, “I Hate Grad School,” a parody of Asher Roth’s “I Love College.”
AVAILABLE ON A.P.T.’S “Welcome 2 Cali” Mixtape – Click HERE for download info!
INSIGHT INTO A SONG:
Asher Roth’s song, “I Love College” – is just ripe for parody.
When I first heard the song, I automatically thought of a song with the opposite connotation – i.e., “I Hate College.” But it seemed pretty obvious – and one look on YouTube proved me right: just about everyone and their Mamma had done a “I Hate” song of some kind (“I Hate High School,” “I Hate College,”) or an “I Love” song of their own.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, though, it’s that just because an idea has been thought of doesn’t mean you can’t still come in and make your own. Especially if those other ideas haven’t been presented well. Most of the songs were recorded on lousy mics, or had a crappy video with it, and weren’t really good.
Still, even the sucky songs were getting quite a few hits on YouTube. I figured if I made one with good quality sound AND a decent video, I could, at the very least, make people want to download the song for FREE – and it’s only available on my NEW mixtape, “Welcome 2 Cali,” so hopefully it will do just that!
As for the song itself, I knew that, based on all the complaining I did while in school, I could definitely do an “I Hate College” type of song. It was then I realized that, out of all the song parody ideas for this song I found on YouTube, the only one I didn’t see was one about Grad school! And, with these next two weeks being finals time for most students, I’m sure they are feeling enough stress and pressure to warrant a song like this being out there! (It also helps that I have friends in grad school, as well as my Mom, who complain about doing their work ALL the time!)
The song itself was easy to write. Most of the stuff I did in college in terms of work and tests still applies in grad school (or so I’ve heard), only on a much bigger scale. I decided to keep the same exact flow as Asher Roth did in the original version so that, when people heard it, they’d instantly recognize what I was trying to do.
I also used two different choruses for the song. The first two are the exact same, with me talking about sleeping during a lecture, erasing my paper, and going to college to try and be successful. In the last chorus, though, I talk about how, now that I graduated, I still can’t get a job even with my master’s degree due to a bad economy.
This song is pretty funny, and one of my favorite parodies!
Some Interesting Song Insight:
1. I felt the need to brag at the end about how I didn’t go to grad school because “I’m too busy being successful without it!” Part of the reason: many people I used to converse with back in college were so into the belief that they just HAD to go to grad school to make it, while I was of the thought that it was NEVER about the degree, but about (a) who you know, and (b) what kind of opportunities you can make for yourself. (This, of course, excludes things like being a lawyer, doctor, or types of professions where master’s degrees and PH.D’s are strictly needed.)
2. Finding the instrumental for this thing was terrible! It took me forever to finally find a site that had a FREE download for it. In retrospect, though, I could have just used my LimeWire program, but that would have required opening up my slow laptop. Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it…
INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:
Since it’s a song about school, I decided to keep it simple and make the video like a school year book. I found various pictures online associated with the subjects talked about in the song, and put them in an order that made sense with the song.
Along with that, I took pics of myself in various forms of book study. I don’t have any actual text books, but the books I read are mostly about financial stuff, or being persistent in goals. I dunno, maybe I’m studying to be a motivational speaker!
Once I took the pics, though, I decided to do a few film shots as well to break up the monotony of it all. Thus, the sequences of me typing on my laptop, studying in my room and – my personal favorite – drinking coffee. You’ll have to see the video to see why!
Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:
1. I took the pics/shot the footage of myself at about 4 AM. I had just gotten back in from seeing a movie and hanging out with friends, and figured, “Hey, long as I’m up, I might as well get my parts on camera!”
2. For the coffee portion to be sped up, I had to move the mugs very slowly. And no, there’s no actual coffee in the mugs – I don’t drink coffee!
3. There are a few parts of the video where I have a picture, and I let it sit there for a longer period of time. One of them is a comic strip and the other is a list called “Should YOU Go to Grad School?” I wanted people to be able to actually read those pics, so I stretched them out longer.
4. Amazingly, this video took a while to edit. With most picture videos, it takes me an hour, MAYBE an hour and a half. This one, though, took about 3 and a half hours to edit altogether! Good thing I was using a MAC and not my PC!
That’s all for now! Next week is the FINAL video in this year-long project, and I couldn’t be more excited! In the meantime, be sure to download my NEWEST mixtape, “Welcome 2 Cali!” See ya next week!
This week’s video is for the song, “Rock and Roll,” produced by & featuring King Kut.
INSIGHT INTO A SONG:
I’ve probably mentioned the “Obama Milli” song in the majority of my “One-Song-a-Week” song descriptions more than any other song this year, and for good reason. That song has pretty much been the catalyst for the majority of the stuff I was able to experience this year, from getting interviews to being able to move to Cali, and everything else in-between.
The way I came about doing this week’s song, “Rock and Roll,” stems back from a fan I got as a result of him first being exposed to “Obama Milli.” After the song went national, I started getting request from underground artist to do collaborations with them. Most of them were probably trying to feed off the exposure I was getting in the hopes that they, too, would get seen, but I was hesitant to collaborate with just anybody. Unless they either (a) sent me a beat that was bangin’ with their parts already recorded, or (b) I went to someone’s MySpace page and found a song I wanted to do a remix to, I didn’t want to do a collabo. After all, since I haven’t met these people, if they ended up being rapist or drug dealers, MY name would end up being associated with them if they did something stupid and got arrested, and, since I’m still a relatively unknown media presence I didn’t want to have people looking at me funny once I got more exposure.
In November, about 2 weeks before I released my “The Next Black President (a.k.a. Back on My Grind)” mixtape, I received an email from a rapper/producer named King Kut. He said he was a fan of “Obama Milli” (of course) as well as the title track from the mixtape, and that he wanted me to do a collabo with him for one of his upcoming mixtapes. He also sent me the addresses to his web pages to check his stuff out.
I checked out his pages. His beats were bangin’, and the songs he had up, while not lyrically the best, had some outstanding choruses. However, at the time I still getting requests from lots of people who wanted to do collabos, so to me it was just another person wanting to add their name to my quasi-fame. Once all the “Obama Milli” stuff died down, I figured he, like many others, would forget I existed and it wouldn’t matter.
Fast-forward to January ‘09: In the course of preparing songs for my “The Great Black Hope” album, I was looking to do at least ONE collaboration for the LP. I looked back in my E-mail stack and saw King Kut’s message. Then I remembered that I had forgotten to write back to him, so I did, and told him I’d be curious as to what song ideas he had in mind, or what beats he may have wanted to send me (since I was in beat-looking mode.) I didn’t think I’d actually hear back from him, but lo and behold: he sent me 2 beats (one the next day, and one a few days later for my birthday), both of which were pretty good! As for the collaboration, by that time I had already done a collabo with another group, and couldn’t think of a song prior to the release date of my album for us to do together, so I told him that if I decided to do another album/mixtape this year I’d see how I could get him on a song…
Fast-forward to April ‘09…
Since I’ve moved to Cali, I’ve been working on a top-secret online entertainment project with a guy named Rob, who found out about me via my “Obama Milli” song (see? I TOLD you it was the catalyst for all this stuff!). Part of the project has a musical component to it, and I had been trying to make my own beats for the songs I’m making on that project. However, with all the other stuff I have to do for the project (writing scripts, drawing comings, writing songs, etc.), having to make all the beats myself was becoming time-consuming.
I decided to see if there were beats in my catalogue that I hadn’t used yet that I could use for the project. I also started looking at any beats made by other people that would sound great for some of the songs. In the process of doing so, I remembered the beats King Kut had sent me back in January that I hadn’t used yet. Since I liked them, I wrote King Kut and asked him if he had any other beats he could possibly send me. Without hesitation, he wrote me back and said he could send me some beats!
As part of his message, he included his websites at the end. I noticed the sites he had were similar to the ones I had: he had a YouTube site for videos, as well as a WordPress.com site for… well, I had no idea, but I had to check them out. First one I checked out was his YouTube page. Apparently he had been doing this project for a while, ’cause the first video I saw was video #25!
The name of the video was “Rock and Roll” (I know you were wondering when I’d actually get to talking about the song), and, as soon as it came on, it sounded like a hit. Once I heard the chorus, it was a rap – that song was just TOO catchy! How do I know? I was going around my apartment singing the chorus to that dang song the rest of the day!
After I saw his other videos (and yes, if you’re reading this I sat at your WordPress site and watched ALL your videos), I kept going back to “Rock and Roll.” Everytime I heard it I’d start freestyling off some lyrics ’cause the beat just made it so easy! I didn’t know if he’d be up for it, but I HAD to see if he’d be interested in doing a remix to the song. I wrote him, told him I was interested in doing one. Not only was he interested, he sent me a beat the same day with his first and third verse on it, and a section with no lyrics that gave me 16 bars of room to “do my thang!”
This is one of those songs where the lyrics don’t really matter. Yes, I know all those so-called “real MCs” will probably hate on me for saying that… but get the f–k over yourself. Not every song need have meaning, and it’s not ALWAYS about what’s BEING said in the song, but HOW it’s being said. This is the type of song whereby you have to go with the feel of the beat. Since it’s a dance/snap type of song, if the lyrics don’t flow with the beat in a certain way, the dance vibe of the song gets ruined.
King Kut’s part of the song was already chanty in sound, so I didn’t want to copy his flow because then it becomes monotonous to the listener, and would make me sound like I was trying to copy him. So, instead, I decided to use a few different flows in my part: the fast flow, the chant flow, the choppy flow… all mixed together in a nice verse that still makes the song danceable and will make people wanna get buck at the same time!
This is, with out a doubt, a SMASH hit. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it yet, but I want this song to blow up ’cause it’s just THAT hot!
Some Interesting Song Tidbits:
1. The first part of my verse starts with the word “Don’t” because, at the cut-off point for my verse there was a very small, yet distinguishable “D” sound that didn’t quite get cut out.
2. My favorite verse is when I say: “Got a girl with me, I’m hard as a ROCK/She ready to ROLL…” I wanted to incorperate that into the song somewhere just ’cause it sounded clever!
3. My voice may sound a wee bit distorted. I used the “Electric Rock Sound” effect on my voice to give it more of a rock sound edge. Hopefully people won’t take that as me having a crappy mic!
INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT
This was actually a very time-saving video for me to make. Since King Kut already had a video for the original version of “Rock and Roll,” I asked him to send me the video as is, and I would incoperate my footage into it.
Upon first reuqest, though, I think he thought I wanted him to send me the just the footage sans song, so he sent me two clips: a clip from the original video where he’s in orange lighting, and a brand new footage set with him wearing a red shirt and red Kanye-style glasses that wasn’t in the first video. I was trying to make the video editing process easier on myself, though, since I had other videos (not involving musie) that I had to shoot.
Even though I finally got the original video footage, I liked the new one with him in red enough to incorperate it into the new video as well. As for my footage, I wanted to keep it in line with his footage, meaning I didn’t want to do something over-extravagant that would make people be able to tell the difference between his shots and mine (except for the fact that, since I shot my footage using my MAC camera, it’s in widescreen mode). I did a shot of me doing the song in my Hampton Alum T-shirt on the side of my kitchen that had a refridgerator, sink, oven, etc.; and the second shot was taken in front of my window with the cool-loooking brown shades (I’ve used that window in about 5 videos now, and it never gets old to me).
Once my shots were complete, I had to transport all the footage over from the MAC to the PC. Since King Kut’s footage was saved as a WMV file, I couldn’t load them up onto my MAC (and the converter costs money which I don’t feel the need to spend yet). Meaning that, yes, I had to take the ol’ slow-acting laptop out of retirement for another video edit. I started editing this bad boy at 6, and finished at 9 – not too long, but it would have been edited in about an hour on the MAC so… yeah, may have to get that converter soon after all!
After loading the footage onto the PC, I added some effects to my footage (since he already had effects on his), as well as to the new footage of King Kut. You’ll have to see the video to see the effects themselves, but all in all the video came out fantastic!
Some Interesting Video Tidbits:
1. I actually shot a whole segment on my Kodak camera with me wearing the Hampton Alum shirt. Then, I went to get a haircut the next day prior to me shooting the second footage. I didn’t want to be inconsistent, so I didn’t use it.
2. There is actually a dance I made up that goes with this song! There are a few shots of it in the video, but I actually had a longer segment where the dance goes on longer so people can get a feel of it. I may have to release another video showing off how to do the “Rock and Roll” dance!
3. In case you can’t read it too well, the shirt I’m wearing says “I used to have a six-pack.” Underneath is an empty plastic can-holder of what used to be a “six-pack.” Get it?!?
4. Editing time for this video: 3 to 4 hours, most of which was me waiting for pauses when my PC was trying to load the footage. I’m SO glad I have a MAC!
That’s all for now – only 2 more videos left to go! See ya next Sunday!
This week’s video is for the song “Ahead of the Rest,” produced by Vybe Beatz.
AVAILABLE ON A.P.T.’S “Welcome 2 Cali” Mixtape! Click HERE for download info!
INSIGHT INTO A SONG:
This is one of those songs where the ideas and lyrics for it came together rather quickly. I was listening to beats over at Soundclick.com one day (for another project I’m working on that’s music-related but not A.P.T.-related) and when I came across this beat on producer Vybe Beatz page, I instantly liked it.
The name of the beat was called “Ahead of the Rest,” and I could hear why: it sounded like an instrumental that could have been used in a “Rocky” movie, very victorious-sounding in nature. I downloaded it, and figured it would be a while before I thought up a chorus to it… but lo and behold, not long after I downloaded it, I had a chorus in my head!
Once I have a chorus for a beat, thinking up lyrics is usually pretty easy. Since my chorus went with the theme of the title of the beat, i.e. being ahead of everybody else, all the lyrics of my song had to do was back that statement up.
And, not to brag, but within the last year, the amount of things I’ve been able to experience as a result of having a hit song… well, okay, so I haven’t really experienced a lot. But, in comparison to the majority of people trying to get in the business, the fact that I’ve been able to do radio interviews, gain fans, and go from living in ATL to Cali and spend all my time and focus on building up my own business definitely puts me ahead of the majority. Thus, the song is rather fitting to my current – and, hopefully, future – way of life!
In terms of writing the song, the original plan was to collaborate with another person on the song. I sent it to an MC named ____ who isn’t that well known but is hard on his grind right now. He puts up songs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on his Facebook page, and, since the stuff he talks about is “real,” I figured he’d be a good match for the song. Unfortunately, he never sent his verse back to me! Luckily, while riding the bus one day I suddenly started thinking of words for a second verse, so it worked out good. Still, my song is only two verses long, but the original beat goes on for a 3rd verse, so if he decides to jump on there WILL be a remix!
Some Interesting Song Tidbits:
1. Since this is a “bragging” song, I tried to add in as many funny metaphors as I could to further the humiliation of my rap “opponents” who aren’t as far ahead in the game as I am.
2. The quote – “But I won’t let them take away my energy” – is sung in the style of Keri Hilson’s “Energy” song. I point this out because I don’t know how many people heard that song – it’s an okay song, but I wanted to switch up me rapping for a small mock-singing part.
3. The hardest part of the song to write was the last two lines. I knew I had to end it with a good punchline, but thinking of something that rhymed with “Atlas” that would still be funny was HARD. Once I had it, though, it was a RAP! (Get it? A “rap?” Ha ha!)
INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT
I actually shot a video for this LAST week using my green screen blanket. Unfortunately at the time, I hadn’t quite figured out (a) how to get the right lighting so that shadows wouldn’t appear on it; (b) how to hang said blanket without having wrinkles show up on it (thus making it a biznitch to try and remove later); and (c) how to edit it all together. So, instead, I put up the “I Get Honeys” video (which has been doing well so far – no surprise there since it’s a parody of a 50 Cent song) and prayed to God that I’d be able to figure out how to edit a green screen video by this Sunday.
Lo and behold: I was blessed with another green screen, only this one was made of a material that couldn’t wrinkle. I was also blessed to get the right lights to use to make the screen the same color, and finally learned how much distance I need to have away from the screen so my shadow won’t be all over the place.
Prior to re-filming the video on the new green screen, I started looking back at some of my older videos. One of my favorite songs I’ve made was one called “Back to the Future,” a song where my present self calls up my future self to ask him if his future is going to be better than his life in the “now.” My future self assures his “previous” self that things in his future will be even better than he can imagine.
I thought about this video, and how, much like I said to myself back then, things had definitely gotten better for me. So, I thought it would be cool if my present self was now where my future self was in THAT video, and he calls him back up to tell him (a) that he was right, and that (b) how his life improved.
Of course, since it’s still “present” me calling up “future” me, it means that “future” me has to be doing even BETTER in his “now” than “present” me is doing. The video ends with “future” me telling his “previous” self to get ready for even MORE great things… but of course, he can’t tell him exactly how that’ll happen. Why? ‘Cause that chapter of my life hasn’t actually been written yet – but it will be!
As for the green screen: since this was my first video using it, I wanted to make the background simple. So, I found a bunch of pics that correlate with some of the lyrics of the song, as well as pics that give images of people being victorious. I placed those pics together in a nice little video by themselves in my iMovie program to go along with the song; then I deleted the song, and exported the picture video by itself. I was able to import that movie into the green screen background using my FXHome VisionLab Studio software. With the help of a few instructional YouTube videos, I was able to figure out how to remove the green screen and add in the picture video background.
The only problem I encountered was trying to figure out why the picture video – which was 3 minutes and 54 seconds – kept stretching out to almost 5+ minutes when I placed it under the video of me in front of the green screen. Turns out, since the green screen video was over 5 minutes it was trying to match itself up with it. However, there were parts of the beginning and ending of the video that didn’t have song parts, so all I had to do was click on the picture video’s file and make it go faster, i.e. back to its original link.
Yeah… so, all of the above was technical mumbo jumbo, but I know there are people who may read this and want to know what I use when I edit all this stuff.
All in all, a great video, and one that didn’t really take that long to edit – those are the best kind!
Some Interesting Video Tidbits:
1. I took another subliminal shot at Tyga in this video – I show his picture during the part where I say, “These carbon-copy mini-me’s tryn’a ruin my synergy.” Why? ‘Cause he took my dang song and toured with it AND made money off it w/o giving me credit, and I’m still bitter about that sh-t, okay?!?
2. The phone “present” me is holding is actually one of the early cell phones from the 1990s.
3. In the video for “Back to the Future,” I had the scenes with “future” me edited using an effect that… well, I forget what it was called, but it took away all color and only left an outline of figures. I did it that way to sybolize how people have an idea of what they want their future to look like (i.e. the outline) yet don’t always have the facts yet to see how that outline will be filled in. For this one, I used the X-ray effect for “future” me’s scenes. Why? Because my MAC doesn’t HAVE said outline feature like my PC did. Yeah, it’s really THAT simple of an explanation. Oh well – at least with the X-ray effect you still don’t get a detailed look at everything surrounding me.
4. The food on “future” me’s plate? Plastic fruit. I figured I’d be using an effect that would cover up whatever it was I was eating, and I didn’t feel like making real food. Actually, that’s a lie – I don’t have any real food in my apartment at the moment because I haven’t gone grocery shopping this week!
5. There’s a line where I say, “Some rappers spend their lives tryn’a do what I been doin’,” and there’s a picture of a guy in the background wearing an NYC hat. He’s a rapper named “Papoose.” Yes, that part of the video is a slight dig, not just at him, but at ALL those rappers who were hyped up to be the “next best thing” yet couldn’t manage to get a hit the public could grab on to. Meanwhile, I wasn’t even TRYING, and managed to come up with a worldwide SMASH. Thus, the line, and thus, Papoose’s picture.
6. I actually shot footage of me rapping this song as “future” me, but I didn’t include it because (a) given how my MAC program doesn’t always edit out the sound when I add too many clips – even if I mute it – I didn’t want this to become an editing nightmare, and (b) after placing in the footage of me with the pics in the background, I realised that having the pictures change up would be enough of a distraction to make people “feel” like the scene was constantly changing. Yes, the mind really IS that stupid.
7. There are parts of the video where my blue vest becomes fuzzy, or shows static colors similar to the picture behind me. The reason for this is simple: my Kodak camera, for all it’s been able to do for me, isn’t techincally designed to be doing high-end camera work. As a result, it sometimes shoots stuff whereby the light reflectants show up. In this case, since some of those light reflectants are green, and I used the FXHome program to key out all green colors, any green that reflects onto my vest gets taken out as well, thus having me look like I have holes in my body. Can’t wait to get a REAL high-def camera, people!
8. Estimated editing time for this video… it doesn’t seem like it took a long time, but I know with editing out the green screen and figuring out how to sync everything, that part easily took 2 hours. After that, pasting everything together didn’t really take that long – I did most of it while watching SNL, so that’s about another hour and a half… so, 3.5 hours in all!
That’s all for now! This song will be available on my NEW mixtape, “Welcome 2 Cali,” available Sunday, April 26, 2009! See ya next Sunday!
This week’s video is for the song “I Get Honeys (50 Cent ‘I Get Money’ Parody).”
AVAILABLE ON A.P.T.’S “Welcome 2 Cali” Mixtape! Click HERE for download info!
INSIGHT INTO A SONG:
This week’s song, “I Get Honeys,” is a parody of 50 Cent’s popular song, “I Get Money,” which came out 2 years ago. I also wrote this song two years ago at the height of the song’s popularity in an attempt to get national attention via riffing off someone’s song. It didn’t quite work out that way – I had to wait to riff off Lil’ Wayne via “Obama Milli” for THAT to happen – but I still deemed it a song worthy enough to make.
Coming up with parodies is fun for me. Because of me listening to “Weird Al” Yankovic so much as a kid, my first instinct when I hear a new song is to think of a parody of it. To me, the best ones come naturally without me having to strain and think about it.
I forget how or when I came up with the song, but I’m sure it consisted of me walking around singing “I Get Money” and changing “money” to “honeys” at some point. In fact, as I recall, it was around the same time I got my previous microphone, the H2 Zoom, and was looking for stuff to record to test the sound levels.
I don’t remember the song-writing process for this too well, except that, because I was eager to record ASAP, it was fast and easy to write and record. The only part that sucked was that, upon downloading the beat, I couldn’t find the instrumental without the words “I GET MONEY, MONEY I GOT” being yelled over the chorus. So, when I recorded it, I managed to say the new chorus – “I get honeys, honeys I got” – over it well enough so that you couldn’t really distinguish the original chorus all that wall.
As for the song itself, it’s not all that funny – it’s more of an egotistical “ha ha, I can get chicks” song – but the video is more than humorous enough to make up for it. More on that later…
Some Intersesting Song Tidbits:
1. This is one of those songs where, while I don’t curse, there are a LOT of adult situation references. This was recorded back before I ever anticipated having a large audience for my music. Luckily, I was smart enough by time “Obama Milli” came out to realize the benefits of being a bit more clean.
2. My voice changes to a higher pitch during the chorus, but I can’t remember why. I think it was because I was trying to sound like the chorus of the original song, with it’s scratched-in sound. Didn’t quite work out too well…
INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:
First off: For the record, I actually had ANOTHER song and video for this week. However, that video uses green screen, and – since I’m still figuring out how to use it – the video itself is not finished.
Luckily, I made this one early last year, and it proved to be pretty popular on YouTube (around 10,000 views or so). Unfortunately, the YouTube site I had it on got taken down by the YouTube po-po, and I never re-posted it on my new YouTube site. I don’t think anyone will fault me for wanting to re-post this up… but I ain’t got nothin’ else to put up this week, so HA!
Besides, the video has always been very funny to me and everyone I’ve shown it to. The original idea was to have picture after picture of gorgeous women, but I didn’t think it would make the video funny. Then, it dawned on me to take that idea, and bastardize it! The way I saw it, people would start watching the video and be like, “man, these girls are HOT…”
And then, BOOM! – I’d hit them with a picture of one of the ugliest girls they’ve EVER seen! Then, a few more pics of good-looking women, then… BAM! Another ugmo! It was genius!
Amazingly, finding suitable pics of ugly people online was pretty easy. All I had to do was go to Yahoo.com, type “ugly girls” into the search engine, and a gang of sites and pics came up. As for the editing of the video, I used my muvee program, which was the only one I thought I had installed on my laptop at the time, and picked out the “paintball music video” edit choice to add some “excitement” to some of the pictures.
All in all, a really funny video, and one I’m very proud of, especially since it manages to be funny using all still shots!
Some Interesting Video Tidbits:
1. I’m not in most of this video…. until the very, VERY end, when there’s a picture of me being kissed by an ugly, UGLY woman. It’s a pic I took when I went to visit my friend Michele when she lived in New Orleans 3 years ago – we went to the Ripley’s “Believe It or NOT” museum, and they had a statue of the world’s ugliest woman. I didn’t know I’d use the pic for a video, as I wasn’t making them at the time, but when it came time to do this video I knew I had to include it in there somewhere!
2. Near the end of the video, there’s a picture of a guy dressed in women’s clothing and a wig on. This same pic was also used in video #3, “Your Mom’s a Ho.” S/he was one of the “six baby fathers”
3. Editing time for this video, as I recall, was very short. The longest part was trying to think up the names of various beautiful women celebrities and saving them to my computer.
That’s all for now – I have no more videos in my reserve, so I’ll definitely have something new for you all next week. After all, there’s only 4 more videos left to go!
I know I don’t update this site as much as I used to. Truthfully, I’m doing so much other stuff right now, I don’t have time to write down my every thought except on Sundays when I post up new videos.
But for those that are still keeping up with my progress, here’s the short scoop: things are going good.
Still not rich yet, but I’m workin’ on a project that should get me there soon. Still not signed to a label yet, but I’m not really trying to be. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this whole process, it’s that I actually prefer NOT being well-known by the public. As long as I’m well-known by people in the entertainment industry enough to make a fortune doing things behind the scenes, I’ll be happy. Plus, it means I can travel without having to worry about being mugged by people.
As for my music, I’m still writing songs, still making beats, still finding beats I like to make songs with… and, once I get some REAL money coming in, I’m going to buy some 1st-class beats off Soundclick.com and put together the album I’ve ALWAYS wanted to put together.
Not to say I haven’t made stellar albums yet – it’s just, I want to make at least ONE album where I have all the top-quality elements together. I finally have a REAL decent mic, a quality computer (MAC) to edit on, and, once I get those stellar beats, I can finally put together my classic album. I already have the title and concept of it as well, but I ain’t puttin’ out another one until I feel I can get that REAL quality I want.
That’s not to say I won’t put together another mixtape. In fact, I’ll probably be releasing one within the next month. I’ve already got the title for that, too. I’ll probably release it sometime around the time I release my final video for this project.
