One-Song-a-Week: Song #51 – I Hate Grad School (I Love College Parody)

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!

-A.P.T.

One-Song-a-Week: Song #48 – I Get Honeys (50 Cent “I Get Money” Parody)

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!

-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

One-Song-a-Week: Song #40 – Playa Hate (Destiny’s Child “Say My Name” Parody)

This week’s music video is for the song “Playa Hate (Destiny’s Child “Say My Name” Parody)!”

AVAILABLE ON “THE A.P.T. EP (This is ONLY a Demo),” a.k.a. my very FIRST album circa 2004! FREE Download – Click HERE  for download link!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

This song is 9 years old.  I wrote it back in 2000 during the summer leading up to my freshman year in college.

I had started a website where I would post up parody lyrics to popular songs. I had written a couple of Eminem parodies and wanted to try my hand at making fun of an R&B song.  At the time, the singing group Destiny’s Child had been on a hot streak with their second album, “The Writing’s On The Wall,” and had just released their third single, “Say My Name.”  The song expresses the women’s doubts about their men being faithful to them.  I thought it would be funny if the guy version of it was a song that basically said, “Yeah, I’m cheating on you – but you knew I was doing other girls when you met me!”

Thus, the chorus that came to my head one day: “Playa hate, playa hate/Girl don’t be a hater – you know I’m a player/So don’t hate my game!” 

I wrote up the two verses of the song, along with bridge parts, and… well, that was pretty much it.  At the time, I couldn’t find the instrumental by itself, and had no recording equipment.  So, I posted the song on my site (the name of which I can’t even remember now), printed out a copy of the lyrics, and left it at that.

Fast-forward to Fall 2001: Since I was on scholarship at Hampton University, they had placed brand new Dell computers into each of our rooms.  This was around the same time that the first music sharing site, Napster, was still free, and EVERYBODY on campus was downloading songs.  

As for me… well, I was doing that, too.  But, I also downloaded instrumentals so I could re-make popular songs for my outgoing message machine.  When it was announced one day that our class would be having a talent show, I knew I wanted to perform something…

That’s when I remembered my “Playa Hate” song.  I managed to find a copy of the instrumental on Napster, and… well, I don’t know how I came across recording words into certain parts of the instrumental (we had a mic of some kind, I guess)… but I did.  When I performed it, the crowd – most of whom had heard my hilarious phone messages each week yet may not have known who I was – erupted into laughter and cheers for my song!

Fast-forward to 2004: When I was putting together my first album, “The A.P.T. EP (This is ONLY a Demo),” I wanted to do a mixture of “real” songs and parodies.  And, even though 4 years had passed since “Say My Name” had come out, I figured the song was still funny enough to warrant placing on my album.  Heck, even now, in 2009, the song makes me laugh.  I think that’s the test of a “classic” parody – the ability for it to still have merit beyond the song/artist it parodied.  I don’t know if the “Obama Milli” song will have the same lasting effect… but I know this one does!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. My favorite line in this song almost didn’t get written.  It’s the part where I say, “But I’m a playa babe… and you know I don’t luv deez hoes!”  I was 18 when I wrote this, and at the time I didn’t cuss – EVER – and didn’t really like to say things like “hoes” in a song.  However, for the purposes of how I was personifying the character saying the words of the song (and the fact that most playas SAY this line), I decided to write it in.

2. This beat took FOREVER to find.  I think it’s actually at a low quality because when I found it on Napster it was the ONLY one up, meaning not a lot of people were sharing it.

3. Even though I wrote the song back in 2000, it wasn’t until 2004 that I had the right equipment to record it with.  This version is the same version I recorded back in 2004.  I think I would have re-recorded it… but I lost the beat

4. I shortened the “breakdown” part of the song.  When I first performed it, I noticed that keeping it in equaled a long lull for the audience, and I’m all about the efficiency of the performance!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:

I was actually going to record a video for a song off “The Great Black Hope” this week, but then 2 things happened:

1. I finally got a MAC!!  The computer works so much faster than my PC did, and the editing program is FANTASTIC!  However, I didn’t want to make this big elaborate video, only to find out that (a) I might now know how to work the editing program enough to figure out how to use it in time to post a video, which would mean resorting back to my slow PC, or (b) that my camera wasn’t compatible to the MAC.

2. I. Got. SICK.  It rained here in Burbank on Thursday, and as soon as I went outside to check our mail, I came back feeling the beginnings of a cold.  By the time Saturday got here, I felt like complete CRAP, but still knew I needed to film a video.

So, I decided to take it easy and do a video that wouldn’t require much of my time.  I decided to do it for “Playa Hate” for a few reasons: one, my parody videos always get lots of YouTube views/downloads; and two, I hadn’t posted up a parody song in a while.

The original was to do it Karaoke-style, where I would paste the words at the bottom.  As I went through the editing process though, I started finding all types of cool effects on the MAC, and decided that – since it’s a “relationship” song (LoL) and it’s near Valentine’s Day, I would do it as though I was crooning to the ladies, even though the song is unromantic as f–k!

The video shoot was simple, too: just me, mouthing the words in front of the curtain in my kitchen, wearing what I consider to be a pimped-out outfit.   I filmed two takes of me performing, then packed up my stuff… and headed back to bed.  

Incidentally, I STILL feel sick now.  Truly, I am dedicated!

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. The part of the video where I cough… in the recording it was fake, but for the video, I actually sneezed at that part of the song.  I figured, “Hey, might as well use it!”

2. While editing, I found a setting called “Romantic” that made the sides of the video blurred slightly to give it that “Hey, baby, I’m singing for you and only you” feel.  I used it for two reasons: one, because I though the effect went great with the song; and two, because, in the farther-away shots, the bottom part of the screen showed part of the box I was standing my camera on, and I didn’t want it to be noticable!

3. Having a MAC is awesome!  I thought I’d have to do part of the editing on the MAC, then transport it to my PC and finish it… but I was able to do everything faster and more efficiently on the MAC after all.  Certainly saved me from more hours of this!

4. Estimated editing time: I have no idea.  It didn’t take long to edit the video when I was actually editing it, BUT because I can do it so much faster now, I spent a good majority of my day in the following pattern: edit, do something else, edit, eat, edit, talk on the phone, edit…

That’s all for now!  Only 12 videos left to go – see ya next Sunday!!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: aptsongs@hotmail.com

MySpace: www.myspace.com/NotoriousAPT

Soundclick: www.soundclick.com/APT 

One-Song-a-Week: Song #20 – A.P.T. (What’s My Name) (Produced by HiFly)

Above: My video for “A.P.T. (What’s My Name?),” a parody of Diddy’s “Swagga Like Puff” video.

Above: Diddy’s video for “Swagga Like Puff,” which my video parodies.

This week’s music video is for the song, “A.P.T. (What’s My Name),” produced by HiFly.

DOWNLOAD FOR 99 CENTS: Click HERE to purchase – Song will be sent automatically after payment!

GET “THE A.P.T. LP” AS AN AUTOMATIC MP3 DOWNLOAD OR MAIL-ORDER CD: Click HERE for info/download link – MP3 Download sent automatically after payment!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

Snoop Dogg. Dr. Dre.  Lil’ Boosie.  Eminem. Lil’ Wayne.

All of them have one thing in common.  Okay, actually, they have a few things: they’re all rappers, they have lots of fans, and have made LOTS of money off their stage names.

Part of the reason for that is because they’ve drilled their names into people’s head through song.  And not just the occasional self-mentioning of their names in a few of their tunes.  I’m talking about the fact that they’ve made popular songs where their name is the chorus of the song.  People hear these songs in the club, and – through the power of direct suggestion – become familiar with the names of the artist repeating his/her name.

When I was recording songs for “The A.P.T. LP,” I knew I wanted to have a song where my name was in the chorus.  Actually, I figured that out WAY before this CD was even a thought, and the chorus to the song – “What’s my name? (A!) What’s my name? (A!) What’s my name? (A. – P. – Taaaaay!)” – has been in my head for almost 4 years, along with the opening lines, “Lights, camera, filming and ACTION/A.P.T.’s back with a passion…”

That’s all the song I had for 4 years.  I would walk around freestyling the rest of the song, and was eventually smart enough to write down some song lyrics during one of my typing song sessions (where I type out random lyrics and hope they will fit into a song).

I had an idea of how I wanted the beat of the song to sound, but I couldn’t seem to actually make the beat.  Then, I went online and found a guy named HiFly who had an array of beats.  There was a beat he had that sounded simply epic – it sounded like a beat that should open up an album and announces to the world that THIS is the official start of the album. 

When I heard the beat, I knew I wanted to use it for a song, but didn’t know which song.  After I started trying to think of a chorus to go with it, I realized that the “What’s My Name” chorus would go perfect with the beat.  I gathered together some lyrics I wrote, and WHAM!  I had a song!

This is one of those songs where I have to talk about how cool/good/better than others I am.  After all, my name IS in the chorus.  So, nothing too deep – just some entertaining stuff!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. The second-to-last line in the first verse – “I’m like milk on a shelf, I’m legendary” – I came up with YEARS ago, and have been dying to use it in a song.  It’s one of those play on words that have to be explained, which I actually do in the next line of the song (“Milk – dairy? Legde – shelf?”).  I figured no one would get it otherwise.

2. The second verse of the song is what I called a “verse countdown.” The first line is “I spit a mean 16 on the mic…”  for the first line, and so forth, until the 16th bar when I say “No ONE.”

3. I wrote the last verse a few days after Issac Hayes died while exercising.  In retrospect, the line “I have you slumped over and limp like Issac Hayes” is probably too soon… but heck, I liked it, so I put it in!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT:

It just so happens that Sean Combs, a.k.a. Diddy, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a…. Okay, I could type this all day… the point is, he has a video blog on YouTube, and for one of his vlogs last week he put up a video for a remix song he did called “Swagga Like Puff.”  The video was so simplistic and basic, yet hilarious… and since this happens to be MY 20th music video, I just KNEW I had to do a parody video of Diddy’s video!

Once again, doing a parody of anything takes work.  I had to study the stuff Diddy does in his video, and watched it at least 20 times before I got the flow down of all the stuff he does in the video.

BTW: My video is much funnier if you’ve actually seen Diddy’s video, which is posted above.  I made some “changes” to the things he did in the video (for example, showing off Pinot Grigio instead of Ciroc Vodka), and it’s pretty hilarious!

Some Interesting Video Tidbits:

1. The king crown worn in the video is from Medieval Times, which I went to back in July with my friend Michele.  I always try to keep props I get when I’m out – ya never know when they might come in handy!!

2. Yes, I actually poured oatmeal into a bowl, mixed it with orange juice and took a bite.  What you don’t know: after the video was done, I actually microwaved the oatmeal with the O.J. in it and ate it.  Prognosis: it really does NOT taste good!

3. The Pinot Grigio bottle in the video? Camanile.  I don’t drink wine, but I had the bottle, and poured water into it. 

4. The dancing at the end is BAD.  But so was Diddy’s dancing.  Perhaps, since this was a parody, I should have done some GOOD dancing, LoL!

5. Edit time for this video: less than 2 hours. Heck, I shot the whole thing today AND edited it within about 3 hours total!

That’s all for now – this song appears on “The A.P.T. LP,” and can be downloaded as a single at my soundclick site, www.soundclick.com/APT! See ya next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: aptsongs@hotmail.com

MySpace: www.myspace.com/NotoriousAPT

Soundclick: www.soundclick.com/APT

You Can’t Stop Me + This Week’s Video

Memo to YouTube: You can’t stop me, bitches!!!

Yeah, they took down my entire site, but so what?!?  I’m on a mission people.  One video/song (minimum) every Sunday for one year.  That’s 52 videos (minimum) from May 2008 to May 2009.

I hope you didn’t think losing all 316,000 views for my “Obama Obama” video, or the 4500+ views for my “The N!@@er Song” would cause me to go crying off into the sunset.  

And yeah, who cares if you messed up my advertising plan for my album – I STILL sold a few copies, and guess what?  I’m going to sell even MORE once the videos come out — on YOUR site!!

So… with that said, this week’s video is already in the can.  It’s from one of the songs off “The A.P.T. LP”, a hot dance song with a bangin’ beat and some… interesting… lyrics and scenarios.  Yeah – that’s all I want to say about it for now!

Okay, I’m done!  And HA HA HA to YouTube – you can’t stop a man with a dream, people!!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: aptsongs@hotmail.com

MySpace: www.myspace.com/NotoriousAPT 

One-Song-a-Week: Song #12 – Kick Bush (Lupe Fiasco “Kick Push” Re-make)

 Attention Colleges, Universities and More (especially in Atlanta):

Demand A.P.T. to perform in your city at your venue! Go to: www.eventful.com/apt and request a performance by ME - the more invites I get, the better chance you have of seeing me perform in your town!

DOWNLOAD “THE O-BAMA MIXTAPE” – Click HERE for the link!

Hey! If you like the mixtape… help a brotha get his music career started – SEND A DONATION! Click HERE for more info!

This week’s song/music video is for “Kick Bush” (Lupe Fiasco “Kick Push” Re-make)

AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY ON “THE O-BAMA MIXTAPE”: A.P.T. Song #12: “Kick Bush” (Lupe Fiasco “Kick Push” Re-make)

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

I wrote this song two years ago, around the time Chicago-based rapper Lupe Fiasco dropped his first single, the oh-so infectious skateboarder’s anthem, “Kick Push.” Whenever I hear a song I really like, it becomes inevitible that I’ll start freestyling something to the beat and/or re-creating the song to my own version.

For this one, replacing “Push” with “Bush” was a no-brainer. Having the word “Kick” in front of it was also approriate, as most people are so angry with President Bush’s performance in the White House that the feeling of shoving a boot in his arse is universal.

To write the song, I decided to focus on his two major screw-ups while in office. The first verse mentions the tragedy that struck the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and Bush’s botching of the situationg – not only by delaying his reaction to initially hearing about the incident, but also somehow managing to get us into a war with Iraq, despite the fact that it was people from Afganistan who attacked us.

The second verse talks about Bush’s mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina situation. Louisiana and Mississippi were both struck by this high-category storm in 2005, and the goverment’s response to it… well, let’s just say, they were able to get food to Iraqis halfway across the world faster than a state less than 3 hours away by plane. And while people were waiting to be saved in Louisiana, what was our President doing? Going to plays, judging mundane farm contest, and basically doing everything BUT touching down on the ground in those two states and connecting with the people.

Moron.

Anyway, my friend Michele was living down in New Orleans in 2006, and I went down there to (a) visit her, and (b) see the destruction first-hand. It had been about 11 months since the storm hit, and parts of the city looked like it had been hit the day before I went! That, combined with my viewing of Spike Lee’s Hurricane Katrina documentary on HBO, made me think up this song.

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. This is what I consider a “re-make,” not a “parody.” Parodies are meant to be funny, and this one is not all that humorous. However, it does follow the cadance and flow used by Lupe Fiasco in “Kick Push,” so if the song should be funny to those familiar with the original song.

2. The voice of “Bush” in the song is me. I have to say this, because for some reason people think “A.P.T.” is a group, and when I do voices it only makes people think this more. I have NO help at the moment, people!

INSIGHT INTO THE VIDEO SHOOT:

So, the song was written and recorded two years ago. Why release it now?

I put it on “The O-Bama Mixtape” because I always thought it was a good song, and that people would enjoy listening to it (especially true hip-hop heads who LOVE Lupe Fiasco). At the same time, any songs with a major public figure have what I call “limited shelf life.” They are only relevant for as long as that public figure is, which means once that person goes away, so goes the popularity of the song.

In this case, the song calls for the President to be impeached and/or kicked out of office. However, since it’s an election year, Bush WILL, in fact, be out of office come January 20, 2009. Therefore, any songs I have where I talk about him have to be released prior to November, when our next President will be elected into the White House.

“The O-Bama Mixtape” was released 2 weeks ago. And guess what one of the more popular songs on the mixtape was? You guessed it – “Kick Bush!” The song has already been posted on numerous websites, and someone even attempted to make a re-remake of my song and post it on YouTube… but he hasn’t gotten many views for his because, quite frankly, it sucks. You can’t just MAKE a re-make or parody people; work and research has to go into it so it catches on!!

Since the song has already shown its popularity, I figured, “hey, why not make a music video for it?!”

Amazingly, I had the idea for this video for two weeks now. I’m basically stealing the idea from “Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood,” only it’s “Mr. Taylor’s Neighborhood.” I’m reading a book I just bought called “Kick Bush: Based on a True (But Sad) Story,” and – because it’s mostly a picture book – the majority of the video tells the story of the song via digital images. Very ingenious, and non-time consuming film-wise – it only took me about 35-40 minutes to film my part of it.

The longest parts of putting the video together was (a) finding the pictures to use, and (b) editing. I was on google and Yahoo for God know’s how long, looking for public domain pictures to use in the video. As for editing… let’s just say, having a PC program sucks monkey balls. I had to publish this friggin’ video FOUR times because there would be a glitch here or there that would pop up in the video after it was done publishing. Also, because I decided to put transitions from shot-to-shot in here, it bumped up the publishing time from 10 minutes to 28 minutes.

Yes, I sat around for TWO hours waiting for this thing to be published right, so people had beter enjoy it!!

Some Interesting Video Tidbits:

1. I did NOT film this in my apartment! My shower is broken at the moment, and maintenence has yet to fix it, so I have to use another apartment to shower in. This is the place I chose to film this video because my place was messy, and I wanted another place for people to look at besides my place all the time!!

2. I got the floor rocking chair from Target. Yes, it really DOES rock,, and is very comfortable!

3. The opening shot of the video is the front of my apartment complex.

4. I made the “book-cover” myself using a piece of paper and a red-and-green crayon. The book is actually a journal I used to write in from ages 15 to 18.

5. I filmed myself doing the song twice. The first time I filmed it, the back of the book was showing, but the paper only went to the half-way point of the back end. Since I wanted to give the illusion that this was a REAL book, I had to film it over and over again until I finally had the book at an angle to where the back wasn’t showing.

6. Estimated editing time: a LONG time. The editing was done by 1 PM, but the publishing took until 5 to get right. I need a MAC and a hired editor – this stuff is time-consuming!

That’s all for now – enjoy the video, and I’ll see you next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: aptsongs@hotmail.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/notoriousapt

One-Song-A-Week: Song #1 – Erectile Dysfunction (Snoop Dogg Sensual Seduction Parody)

Attention Colleges, Universities and More (especially in Atlanta):

Demand A.P.T. to perform in your city at your venue! Go to: www.eventful.com/apt and request a performance by ME - the more invites I get, the better chance you have of seeing me perform in your town!

DOWNLOAD “THE O-BAMA MIXTAPE” – Click HERE for the link!

Hey! If you like the mixtape… help a brotha get his music career started – SEND A DONATION! Click HERE for more info!

This week’s song/video is called “Erectile Dysfunction” (A Parody of Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction”) – Appears on “The O-bama Mixtape!”

DOWNLOAD THIS SONG 4 FREE: A.P.T. Song – “Erectile Dysfunction”

SEND DONATIONS – Click HERE For More Info!

 

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

Last December, Snoop Dogg released his song, “Sensual Seduction,” and after one listen, I KNEW this song would be ripe for a parody!  After taking two days to figure out what I could use as subject matter that would sound close to the phonetics of the original song, I suddenly thought of “Erectile Dysfunction” and burst out laughing!

Clearly, this was a good idea to run with.

I recorded it and wanted to get the song out there, but I had two problems: one, I didn’t have time to put a REAL video together because it was around Christmas and staying with family; and two, I wasn’t too familiar with any free MP3 download sites.  So, I found a bunch of pictures online, pasted them and put them together on www.onetruemedia.com, loaded up the music and made a crappy-ass video for the song, figuring it wouldn’t get much play, but I could at least send it out to my friends via youtube.

Imagine my surprise when, one day after putting it on youtube, it had 120 views – and I hadn’t even told anyone about the song yet!

5 months later, the song just passed the 10,000 view mark.  My brother’s girlfriend’s brother, who goes to VCU, said it was the #1 downloaded song at his school – odd, given that I didn’t give a link address for the download of the song until last month.  Guess someone must have recorded it and sent it around – and I couldn’t be happier about it!

So, enjoy the song! Come back next week for another song, courtesy of me!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: aptsongs@hotmail.com