One-Song-a-Week: Video 52 Part III: I’m the Realest feat. Jay-Z (Produced by King Kut and A.P.T.)

Above: The long version of “I’m The Realest” featuring an intro and outro skit!

Above: The short version of “I’m the Realest” with the song and montage part only. (For people with short attention spans.)

This week’s video is for the song “I’m the Realest” feat. Jay-Z (beat produced by King Kut, Jay-Z vocals added in by me!).

AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY ON A.P.T.’s “WELCOME TO CALI: THE MIXTAPE!” Click HERE for download link!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG:

When making the “Welcome 2 Cali” mixtape, I knew I wanted whatever the last song on the album was to also be the song I used for the last video of my “One-Song-a-Week” project.

I had a stack of beats that I had gotten from King Kut (who I collaborated with for video 50, “Rock and Roll (Remix)“), and there was a particular beat that stood out to me – it was bouncy, had a frenzied chorus, and sounded like it would make for a good song. Actually, when I heard the beat I had an idea for TWO songs I could make, but didn’t know which one I wanted to go with.

My original idea was to make both of these songs using the same beat. One of them – which I haven’t made yet and will therefore not mention the title of – was a goofy-sounding song while the other one was “I’m The Realest.” The idea takes off from the part of Jay-Z’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” song where he says: “I’m the realest that run it, I just happen to rap…” I thought that part of the song would lend itself to me writing about how I was able to stay true to myself while making music, despite the fact that (a) I’m not seen as a “typical” rapper, and (b) that I do a whole bunch of other stuff well (acting, producing, drawing, etc.) and that rap is something that I just “happen” to also be good at.

So, I was going to go ahead and record the song… but first, I had to take the beat King Kut sent me and mix it in with the lines from the Jay-Z song that I wanted for the chorus. However, I didn’t know how to take the vocals and change the pace/tone of them on my MAC’s Garageband program. Plus, the acapella vocals for the song could only be gotten one way – Limewire – and, since it’s not installed on my MAC (no WAY I’m even taking a chance at a virus getting on this computer), I had to use my PC to actually download it.

Since I had my PC up and running, I decided to use the Magix Studio 14 program I have on it to mix in the vocals. Despite my PC being slow at times, my music program actually runs quite well on it, and Magix Studio 14 allows me to bend, cut, and position beats and vocals any way I’d like to. I loaded in the acapella Jay-Z vocals and picked out the part I wanted to use. Now all I had to do was load in the beat…

I looked on my external hard drive for the file that said “Beat #1.” I noticed there were actually TWO beats with that same title – one saved in .wma format, and the other saved in WAV format. Not knowing which one was the one I actually needed, I figured I’d listen to both to see which one was the one I had been looking for. I imported in the first “Beat #1…”

And it was the wrong one.

In fact, it was one of the beats I had actually NOT had an idea for a song for. The beat itself was good, but it was repetitive, and there was no change-up in tone or pace throughout the song, not even during the chorus parts.

And yet…

Because of this beat characteristic, it actually made it the PERFECT beat to use for the song! The way I saw it, the fact that Jay-Z’s voice would be on the chorus meant that people would be paying more attention to him that whether or not there was a music change-up in the background. Most importantly, it meant that the other beat I was going to use could now be use for ONE song, and this beat that I didn’t have a song for at all could be used. Genius!

Once I got the vocals in pace with the beat of the song (it doesn’t sound like it would take that long, but it was probably a good 30 minutes before I got it sounding right and having it go at the right pace), I re-exported it as a WAV file, then sent it back on over to my MAC, where I laid down the vocals.

As for the song itself, I wanted it to sound like a culmination of the year-long experience I went through, from when I first had the idea for the project, to the unexpected success and attention I got as a result of “Obama Milli Remix,” to being able to actively pursue my dreams even moreso as a result. In between all that, I wanted to use a flow that wasn’t just a standard pattern. Admittedly, I have been listening to a lot of Eminem recently, and I always liked how he flows in relation to the beat – over it, under it, inside it, etc., you name it, Em’ does it. Thus, you’ll here voice change-ups, sing-songy parts, and some verbal wordplay, as well as a few funny lines here and there.

And of course, I couldn’t end the song without thanking everybody who helped get me to this point. I now understand why musicians are always saying, “Without you, the fans, I wouldn’t be here.” ‘Cause really, if people hadn’t passed my song around, I wouldn’t have gotten the attention I got, and I would probably still be in Atlanta working at a restaurant NOT making progress (as fast) and NOT being happy – at least not as happy as I am living in Cali 🙂

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. One of my favorite lines is, “Picture A.P.T. sittin’ in an APT in Atlanta.” One, it’s a play on my initials, which are also an abbreviation for “apartment;” and two, I did a great job of making the syllables rhyme in this sentence!

2. It really IS a challenge to try and rap off-beat without making it sound like you’re rapping off-beat and have it flow well. The last part of the first verse where I say, “You… MUST have fallen off the wrong side of the bed/bumped your head/ can’t com-pre-hend ’cause you’re brain dead, oh!” took quite a few takes. When I write it I can hear it in my head, but if I don’t record it right away, having to re-dice it up so it sounds the way I heard it to myself can be challenging!

3. I mention how I didn’t think my songs would get farther than my “poor excuse for a laptop.” Truthfully, when I started out making music on it it wasn’t so bad… but as I added more and more memory to the machine and it got harder and harder to edit my videos, THAT’s when it became a “poor excuse for a laptop,” LoL!

4. The last 2 lines of the song were really hard to come up with. I knew I wanted to end on a joke, and once I figured out WHAT I wanted to say, I had to figure out HOW to put it into rhyme form. I figured it out eventually, but those last two lines took up about 2 hours of my time!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT

This is not only the last video in the “One-Song-a-Week” project, but also the last video in the “Video Wars” trilogy I started 3 weeks ago.

To that end, when I first started it I already had the end in mind – namely, to have a montage of all the videos I had made over the course of the last year. How I was going to present them, though, was the hard part to figure out…

My original idea was to film myself in front of my green screen, and add in the montage as a background later. In fact, I actually DID film myself in front of the green screen doing this song last week while filming video 52 episode 2, “Welcome 2 Cali.” As I mentioned in the video insight for that video, though, keying out the green without having little green fuzzies everywhere took 3 hours, and that was only when using 3 minutes of footage. I couldn’t imagine how nightmarish it was going to be trying to key out the green screen of 3 separate takes, given the fact that, since my camera isn’t a digital one, the fuzzy count would be ridiculous!

My next idea was to place this thing WAY into the future, and have it be a situation where an older version of me is being filmed for a television show, and I’m reminiscing about all the videos I made “back in the day.” I was actually going to do this one – put some flour in my beard and dress up like an old man – but there were two problems: one, I was already an old man in video 10, “Retirement Home,” except I was a bitter old rapper in that one. Unfortunately my old man voice impression doesn’t really change, and I didn’t want people seeing this video, then going back and seeing THAT video and pondering if it was the same character, and why one was mad and the other wasn’t. (Yes, I really think about these types of continuities when making videos.) The second reason is that, since I’ve used my apartment in so many videos, trying to make people believe it was suddenly some other place (i.e. an old folk’s home, a mansion, etc.) would be hard to do.

Then, on Friday, as I was setting up for the “old man” scenario – after all, I had to film SOMETHING – I stopped and reflected on all the videos I had done this past year… and for some reason the “Kick Bush” video came to mind. In that video, I acted like I was the host of a kid’s show called “Mr. Taylor’s Neighborhood,” a take on Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood. At the end of that video, I tell the “kids” to tune in next time… only problem was, I never actually MADE a second video for them to tune in to!

In thinking about it, I figured it would be a decent enough idea to do a second episode of the show, only this time with the “newly improved” set from my California residence.  It would allow me to tell the “kids” in simple vernacular about how I got from D.C. to Cali (since I explain in the “Star Wars” intro how I made it from Atlanta to D.C.), while at the same time making it easier for me to segue into the montage clip I had for the actual song.

Filming the “Mr. Taylor’s Neighborhood” portions of the video was really easy. I filmed myself walking from the sidewalk outside my apartment up to my door, and used that as the opening for the show. Then, I filmed myself walking in while on my phone threatening someone to send the money they promised to me for doing the program, lest I kick their… well, you know. Then, I talk to the kids about how me, Mr. Taylor, made a song that got big enough for someone in Cali to find me and help me move there. From there, I mention that I still completed my “One-Song-a-Week” project, and to prove it… well, that’s when I go into the montage!

Putting together clips from all my videos was easy, but time-consuming. I figured out the play time of “I’m the Realest” and calculated that I could fit clips of all my videos into the montage if I cut them down to 3 to 5 second shorts. Because their were 53 videos to go through, it took me quite a few hours; luckily, I knew which clips I wanted to use from most of the videos. Unfortunately, in order to do so I had to open up my PC one last time (since most of my older videos up until 40 were done in .wmv format, which wouldn’t transfer onto my MAC) and use the movie converter program I had on there to cut down each clip to the small amount of seconds I wanted to use.

Once I did that, I was going to just put them all in order on my Windows Movie Media program in numerical order, paste on the song, then publish it, load it back onto my MAC and use a converter to change it over to an .mov file. But, I knew that I wanted to have the transitional “roll of film” effects that my iMovie had on its program. So, I took all of the 53 mini-clips that I had, converted them into .mov, then imported them into iMovie, pasted them in order, added the song, and BAM – montage complete! Again, very simple process, but it took almost 6 to 7 hours out of my life!

So, after the opening, the intro, and the montage, I had to figure out a way to end the video. But I had already thought about that during the week, and I knew exactly how I wanted to end it. Since this is the last video in the project, people have been asking me, “What are you going to do after you’re done with it?” I already know what I’m doing since I’ve been working on it since I moved here, but since I can’t reveal everything about it just yet, I decided to end this video by having me begin to tell them, then getting cut off by the credits of the show. I’m sure people will be writing me asking me, “seriously, though – WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO??” Sorry, peeps, can’t say anything just yet!

All in all, I think this video – and, more importantly, this song – was a great way for me to end the project on a high note!

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. When filming the part of the video where I say that people stole my song, I “say” that I don’t want to mention any names, and I wasn’t going to. However, while editing in the text for some of the other clips, I thought it would be funny if I “mentioned” the name by scrolling it at the bottom of the screen. That way, I could “say” the name without “saying” the name.

2. As you will see in the video, I mention the videos in reference to the weeks they were made instead of the number order. This is because (a) I didn’t want people to question why there were 54 videos instead of 52 (there were 2 weeks when I did 2 videos in those weeks); and (2) so people will know that I actually did a video each week.

3. Also, I was originally going to mention the weeks and names of each video using the “writing on tape” effect, but it looked monotonous to me. So, AFTER I gave all the clips that effect, I went back and put in different effects so the audience wouldn’t get bored looking at the same lettering effect over and over.

4. The shirt I’m wearing in the video has the logo on it from EMQTv.com, which is the web site I blog for when I’m not doing music stuff.

5. Editing time for this video: I couldn’t even tell you. I was just so eager to get it done – I started editing it on Thursday, then filmed the parts of me doing the “Mr. Taylor’s Neighborhood” on Friday… let’s just say, I wanted to do it right, so it took a LONG time!

And that’s it! I did it! 54 videos in 52 weeks, baby! Will there be more videos from me in the future? The answer to that is “yes,” but definitely NOT on a weekly basis, but as for right now… I think I deserve a little vacation!

-A.P.T.

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

One-Song-a-Week: Video #52, Episode II: Welcome 2 Cali

This week’s music video is for the song “Welcome 2 Cali!”

AVAILABLE ON A.P.T’S “WELCOME 2 CALI MIXTAPE!” Click HERE for download info!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG

When I came up with the idea to do a “Welcome 2 Cali” mixtape, I knew I wanted to do a title track.

I had downloaded a litany of albums with instrumentals from the most current songs out, and was shuffling through them to pick a beat for the opening. My original choice was a Rick Ross beat I had heard; I also liked some of the 50 Cent beats on those albums (ironic, considering those two rappers are beefing each other right now). I actually had a rap I was going to write, and I knew I wanted it to be something about going from living in VA to being in Cali within the span of 2 years’ time.

Just as I was about to write the song, though, I looked at the other tracks on the album, and realized there was one thing missing: a song that was NOT a rap song. Yes, I like to rap, but I also like to have at least one or two songs where I’m harmonizing, or doing something with a rock edge to it – just something so the album won’t be so monotonous.

As luck would have it, one of the instrumentals on one of the albums happen to be a rock beat! And as I heard it, I automatically started going into rock and roll mode, and crooning out lyrics that, while not rapped, sounded GREAT with the track!

Oh, and guess what the instrumental track was? “Prom Queen,” by Lil’ Wayne!

Yes. So, once again, I found another Lil Wayne beat that I had no choice but to make a song to (this is song number 3, after “Obama Milli” and “A Time 4 Change.” Luckily, I had only heard “Prom Queen” once, and didn’t remember what it sounded like, so I was able to make a completely new-sounding track without having to worry about copying his style.

The lyrics of the song, like all good rock songs, are simple but effective: I talk about how hard I worked to try and make it and how, once I got the opportunity to move to Cali (which, for the record, I NEVER thought would happen as quickly as it did), I jumped on it. That’s the first verse; in the second verse, I talk about how happy I am now that I’m out here, and that speaking your goals into existence actually CAN work.

Again, very simple in terms of lyrics, but sometimes something smart can be said w/o having to say so damn much!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. Contrary to what the song says, I did not almost “cry” when I thought I’d be able to move to Cali. I’m pretty sure I screamed, though 🙂

2. In case the last part of the chorus sounds like I’m repeating myself, the words I’m saying are: “I never thought I’d be here/And I’m so glad I made it here.”

3. In the second verse I say I was “taken away at 5, I wasn’t lovin’ that.” When I was 6 months old my Dad moved us out to Stockton, CA, where I lived until I was 5-1/2 years old. I’ve been trying to get back to this state ever since, and now that I’m here… I’m just so damn happy. Like, EVERY DAY. It’s amazing how much happier your life becomes when you’re living where you want to live and doing what you want to do!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT

So, as you all know, I’ve turned video #52 into a three-part video. Why? Because, due to having two weeks where I made additional videos I technically had 2 more weeks of videos I needed to make. I guess this counts as video 53, but it’s MY project, so screw you!

Anyway, I finally came up with a concept as to how I can tie all these videos together, which is simply by making it a saga about how I went from living in Virginia at my Mom’s house, to ending up in California. Last week’s video, “I Need a Job and I’m BROKE (Mobb Deep Freestyle),” showed me at my Mom’s house doing a freestyle on my computer about the despair I felt that life wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.

For THIS week’s video, I wanted to move it up two years to a very important date in the A.P.T. Success & Progress timeline: Saturday, June 20, 2008. This is the date I decided to film a video for song #5 which, at the time, was simply called “Obama Obama.”

But wait! How do I jump ahead two years without first letting people know how I got to that point? What about the move to Atlanta? How did I get out of my Mom’s house??

I knew I had to let people know those details… but luckily, I already made a song for “The O-bama Mixtape” that detailed it for me! In the first part of “I Put On Remix,” I talk about leaving my Mom’s house. I figured I would just work that part of the song into the video so people would hear it and say, “Oh, so THAT’s how he got out of there.”

But WAIT! How to actually SHOW that??

I couldn’t just type it up and have the music play, and that be it. NO! Luckily, again… last July, when I went to visit my Mom and brother for their birthdays, I filmed some footage of Mom driving me to the bus station, and also asked her to let me get footage of her waving to me saying, “Good Luck!” I was going to use the footage – along with some other footage I took of me on the bus ride back to ATL – for another video, but never did. Who knew that footage would eventually come in handy! (Plus, I wanted to include her in this video since it’s dropping on Mother’s Day. Love ya, Ma!)

So, after adding the aforementioned into the beginning, it was on to the poignant stuff: the “Obama Obama” video shoot. Basically, what happens in the video at the beginning and end is what happened on that day (with added dialogue for story-moving effect, of course). I call up my friend Charis – (a.k.a. the hot chick that appears in the video) and ask her to send me pics and/or video footage of herself with Obama gear in view. I explain to her that I’m shooting a video for a song about Obama that I couldn’t yet talk about, and ask if she’d participate since she was (and still is) a big Obama supporter.

I needed a way to transition into the song, “Welcome 2 Cali.” Obviously since I wasn’t in Cali at the time I filmed the video, I couldn’t fake like I was – the song would have made sense, but people who know me who know the song know I recorded it AND the video when I was in Atlanta.

I decided to do something simple: while talking to my friend about the song, I’d tell her what my hopes for the song were: namely, that it would get big enough to where I’d be able to tour, make money, and move out to Cali. As I’m telling her this, I gaze off and start thinking about what my life in Cali would be like…

…and BOOM! Now I’m in Cali for a “daydream sequence!” Brilliant, ain’t it?

From then on, the video is similar to video #45, “Y’all Haters Should Know”; it’s basically the parts of Cali I would have filmed for that video… had I not forgotten my camera that time 😦

I went to Santa Monica first and got a LOT of beach footage (as you’ll see in the video). Then, I rode the bus all the way to the Pico train station, got some footage there; then I went to Hollywood and Highland Heights, home to the Kodak theatre and a big ol’ outside mall. I took a LOT of pics – even with my digital camera memory, I think I was down to about 4 minutes left of footage I could film or 50 pics I could take before I went home!

On Saturday, I finally filmed the opening and closing parts of the video. Since I was acting like I was calling from the “set” of the “Obama Obama” video, I had to wear the original blue striped shirt I wear when the video first opens. I also needed to have a backdrop of me in my apartment in Atlanta – yet amazingly, I actually forgot to take pics of my studio apartment sans me in the background when I lived there! It took me all week to think of a background I could plaster onto the green screen once I keyed it out… then, I think on Friday, it popped in my head: just use a pic of the background you used in the video with the blue background and the pics hanging up, DUH!

I filmed it, then headed off to the beach to hang with my friends. This morning, when editing the video together, I came across a problem: keying out – or, getting rid of – the green backdrop in my video was a BIAAAATCH!! My camera isn’t a high-def cam, which means that sometimes the green in the background doesn’t always stay the same green color, which is IMPORTANT in order for a keying session to go quickly. My keying session took a whopping 3 hours before I finally got about 85% satisfied with it (and even now, if you look in the video, you can see traces of green around me. I need an HD camera, people!).

Once I got the video sequences together in the order I wanted them, I went back and added a “dream sequence” effect to the parts where I’m day-dreaming about Cali. After I finished adding it, and processing the video, I went back and asked myself: “I wonder what it would look like with the cartoon effect on it instead?” It was a simple question, but when I tried it… it’s not necessarily that it looked better than the “dream sequence” effect, but it worked for me better. Plus, I already used the DS effect in one of my videos (Video #44, “Hey There, Rihanna”), and I didn’t want to copy-cat the effect. I used the cartoon effect once this week on my album review for Eminem’s “Relapse” LP and I liked the way it looked.

This is my biggest video to date, and I’m talking in terms of memory size – because I published it in HD format, it clocked in at 461.3 megabytes. (As a comparison, the video I did for “Obama Obama” (re-dubbed “Obama Milli Remix” by the public at LARGE) was 29.5 megabytes.) It’s also a video I’m very, VERY proud of, mostly because it’s taken me all day to edit, re-edit, and post it up!

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. I actually filmed this video early in the week! My roommate was off work last Monday and, since he (a) was cleaning our bathroom with bleach (which started to hurt my eyes since the bathroom is right next to my room) and (b) rarely gets time in the apartment by himself since I work from home, I decided to venture out to Santa Monica. I figured since I had a whole day to myself, I should bring my camera and film/take pics of everything I could while I was out so I could use it for a video later!

2. I also ended up going to the beach with friends on Saturday. I took film footage and pics there as well, but ended up not using it in the final video, as I didn’t think it went well with the footage I had already shot Monday. Plus, it was cloudy at the beach I went to on Saturday, and night-time filming… well, it didn’t turn out too good 😦

3. There are parts of the video where it looks like the camera is looking back while I’m walking forward, but no one is there. I had plan to green-screen myself singing the song in the same clothes I wore to the beach (which I did film) and have these be my moving backgrounds. However, after spending 3 hours just trying to get in the “Obama Obama” background, I said “screw it!”

4. Speaking of the “Obama Obama” background: I didn’t actually have a picture of it (that I could find), just the video itself. Luckily, I have software on my PC that allows me to take stills from videos and use them as pics. Now that I think about it, though, I have the same ability to do that on my MAC. Dang it!

5. The opening segment and the song don’t exactly match up. In the song, I mention how I got my own car and left my Mom’s house to move down South, which is what actually happened. Unfortunately, as soon as I got down to Atlanta, I drove to Alabama the next day to stay with my aunt and uncle… and my car died. Which is why, in the video, my Mom is just driving me to the bus station.

6. Also, that footage of my Mom driving me to the station was shot last summer, not in 2006.

7. The Thai restaurant in the video? What had happen was, when I got to Santa Monica, I was hungry ’cause I hadn’t eaten breakfast. On the corner was a P.F. Changs. I was going to eat there, and when I walked up to the restaurant, I saw some businesses across the street that had red curtaining for its signs. So, I said, “I’ll walk down this small part of the sidewalk and get a side shot of me walking by these lil’ businesses, then I’ll go eat.” One of the places was a Thai food place, and I have been wanting to try Thai food for the LONGEST time! I went in, saw they had a $7.95 lunch special, and figured I could eat & film there at the same time! (I ordered the Mongolian Beef.)

8. For the “beach-to-water” shot (the one where the camera zooms really fast from the sand to the ocean), I had to film 2 minutes and 7 seconds of me running my butt off with the camera in front of me. In post-edit, I squeezed the time down to 6 seconds.

9. That big “statue” thing I circled around is actually a time capsule! I took pics of me in front of it, but I didn’t feel the need to put them in the video, as it would have been repetitious.

10. This is what I call an “I always get my shot” moment. I don’t have a camera person besides myself, and I wanted to get a shot of me playing in the water at the beach without having to ask anyone. What is one to do? Answer: I build up a mound in the sand, lay my book-bag on it, then place my camera on it. Because the mound is up while the sand below it angles downward as it gets toward the water, it makes for a straight shot, which works even better when the water you’re trying to film yourself in is far away!

11. There is only one part of the video where I mouth the words. I didn’t have a stereo or anything with me, so I just sang the part I wanted to sing and prayed to God it would match the actual tempo/wording of the song later. And it did!

12. For the “congested highway” line, I actually DID film a highway… but it wasn’t congested. I figured watching a passing train would have a similar effect…?

13. Another “I always get my shot” moment: I’m in Kodak theatre, and in the middle of it they have a sidewalk fountain, where they have various holes sprouting water out of them for people to run through. How do I get a shot of myself fighting the water without asking someone else to film me? Answer: I look across from the fountain and see a set of steps with a ledge sticking out the side, put the camera on the ledge and zoom in, then run to do stupid stuff!

14. In the Kodak theatre, they have this thing called “The Road to Hollywood” where they have various quotes from anonymous people giving short quips about how they made it to Hollywood, plastered in tiles in the sidewalk from the start of the Kodak all the way to the end where you can see the “Hollywood” sign in the distance. I actually went through and took pics of most of the tiles, but the one I have in the video is the one I can relate to the most. It says: “I went through a period of rejection, getting close on things but not getting them, having no money, leeching off friends and losing lovers because they thought I was a no-good bum. Eventually things got better. – TV Star”

15. In the “Obama Obama” video, I was clean-shaven and had shorter hair than I do now. At the moment I’m not shaving my facial hair due to a commitment I made to myself not to do so until my next project is launched (which will be very soon). In order to not be questioned about why I had a beard in this video yet not back then, for continuity’s sake I had to add the line in where I say, “I’m about to shave and get a quick hair cut.” Ha ha ha! It’s like that line at the end of Star Wars Episode III where Lucas added in the line about erasing the robot’s memory so they wouldn’t know the events that took place, but only so that fans wouldn’t be asking how they didn’t know about the stuff that happened to Anikan in Star Wars IV, which was actually the first one Lucas shot. Dang, I’m getting good at this!

16. Editing for this video was a bitch, if only because trying to take out the green in the green screen took almost 3 hours. All in all, the video took about 6 hours total to edit. And, because it’s in HD, it took another 2 hours to load up onto YouTube.

That’s all for now – next week is the absolute, FINAL video in this year-long saga, and the conclusion of “Video Wars: From VA to Cali!” See ya next Sunday!

-A.P.T.

One-Song-a-Week: Video #52, Episode 1 – I Need a Job and I’m BROKE (Mobb Deep Freestyle)

This week’s video is for the song “I Need a Job and I’m BROKE (Mobb Deep Freestyle).”

AVAILABLE ON A.P.T’S “WELCOME 2 CALI: THE MIXTAPE!” Click HERE for download info!

INSIGHT INTO A SONG

It’s funny to look back at my past and see just how crappy things used to be for me.  Okay, so it’s not really funny like “ha ha” funny, but it’s still quite interesting…

It was 4 years ago this week that I had graduated from Hampton University with a degree in Theatre Arts.  After I graduated, I went to stay with my uncle in Lansdale, P.A., during which time he helped me out by giving me a job in his sales office selling Rainbow vacuum cleaners.  Not exactly the glamorous life, but it gave me a chance to spend time with my two younger cousins (Samantha and Sheldon), and work on becoming a better orator with people by constantly having to talk to them via my sales presentations.

Unfortunately, I sucked at sales.

Like, I would try with all my might to sell people on the product we were selling – which I even OWNED and used all my life – but I just wasn’t able to persuade enough people to buy it for the price we sold it at.  By November, my contribution in terms of sales was next to nothing, yet I was still living at my uncle’s house using up his food, electricity, water, etc.  Things only got worse when I could no longer afford my car payments, and ended up having to get a hand-me-down car that ate up gas faster than I could pay to re-fill the pump.

Then, one night – like at about 12 midnight – my uncle came in and said I could no longer live with him, and that I had to leave.  At that moment.  Like, at 12 midnight.

I got into my raggedy car and pondered where I could go.  The only place I could even think of going was back home to Richmond, VA, to my Mom’s house.  All I could hope was that my car would survive the 6-hour long trip through the night that it would take to get me there.  Lo and behold, it did: I got there the next morning just as my Mom was heading out the door to work… so you can imagine how surprised she was to see me at her front door telling her the story of why I had to come back home.

Luckily, I have a Mom who is nice and understanding, and she said I could stay there…

Okay, I’m sure at this point you’re wondering: WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE FRIGGIN’ SONG?!?

Well, once I got home, I immediately set out to look for jobs… but it was wintertime, and most of the jobs had already been taken up for Christmas holiday.  Once the beginning of the year came around, the only job I had was as an actor for a dinner theatre troupe which only did plays on Friday and Saturday, and not for much money.  I spent a good majority of my day at home, looking for jobs on the Internet that either wouldn’t require me to have a car (since the car I had when I moved back home broke down on me in December) or that started late enough at night to where I could use my Mom’s car once she got off work.  Unfortunately, this situation still wasn’t too ideal because with both of us using her car, it would mean I’d have to chip in to help keep it up – and, seeing as how I wanted to use the majority of the money to save up for a place of my own…

As you can see, the situation became quite stressful.

The times I wasn’t looking up jobs at home, I’d spend coming up with songs and recording them on my Mom’s computer.  At some point in February of 2006 I found a set of beats on-line that were from popular songs, and decided to make freestyles to them.  One of the beats I picked out was from a Mobb Deep song (can’t remember the name of the song now – I think it was “Put ‘Em in Their Place” or something).  The beat just SCREAMED “please freestyle over me!” So that’s what I did!

The nice thing about freestyles is, if you do it the right way, you never know what you’ll say or where it will take you.  When I heard the beat, all I knew was I wanted to talk about my “current” situation, but because the song wasn’t planned out in advance I didn’t know what I was going to say.  I simply turned on the beat, plugged in my microphone, opened up Sound Recorder, pressed play/record, and let myself rip.

For a freestyle, though, this is easily one of the most linear and cohesive ones I’ve done in terms of staying on the subject matter.  I ended up touching on the fact that I graduated, still had no job, had applied to places but hadn’t heard back from them, was down to using my Mom’s car, and – perhaps most importantly – that I couldn’t date like I wanted to because “You can’t invite chicks – over your Mom’s house!”

In fact, the freestyle was going so good, I probably would have added more to the song… but then the beat started to fade, so I knew I had to wrap it up.  Thus, the spontaneous line at the end where I say, “I need a job – I’m broke!”

As one can tell from seeing where I am now, I was eventually able to move out, but even after this freestyle was recorded, it took until September before I was finally able to move to Atlanta, the result of many months of eBaying, acting, and bar-backing at a club.  It’s nice to be able to listen to this freestyle now and know that I’m NOT in that same place!

Some Interesting Song Tidbits:

1. There’s a part near the beginning where I say, “…that because of the school I went to, that no job/Would wanna TRY to hire me if it’s less than below what they think my means is..”  The truth of the matter is, a lot of places won’t hire people they feel are “over-qualified.”  I was applying to places like Fed-Ex, grocery stores, and other low-paying jobs (mostly because I wanted to have the freedom to quit should the whole acting/music thing take off), but they’d never call me back or hire me.  My reasoning: they saw I graduated, and were probably scratching their heads as to why I wasn’t going for a job with more… whatever.

2. My mom will probably scratch her head at the part of the song where I say, “I’m trying to get my freak on while I’m getting my sneak on/because my Mom, can’t know what I’m doing on the weekend…”  Ugh.  In reality, I wasn’t doing anything provocative on my weekends while at the house (or anywhere else for that matter).  The lyric is more in reference to the fact that, while I was in school I had my own place and could do whatever I wanted to do on the weekends, including invite girls over (which, again, didn’t happen for the most part).  When living at home, though, I didn’t have the freedom to do those things even if I wanted to.  Even if I just wanted to make out with a girl… ya never know when Mom might come home and catch you lip-lockin’ on the couch!

3. I got flustered near the end of the song.  I didn’t know how long the beat was, but as I was saying, “…for not getting a real quote unreal degree…” I could tell the beat was starting to fade, and I lost my train of thought for a second because I now had to figure out a way to end the song.  That’s what happens when a person’s REALLY freestyling, not just reciting some lines he wrote in a notebook earlier!

INSIGHT INTO A VIDEO SHOOT

When deciding on a video to do this week, I was faced with a BIG question: should this REALLY be my last video?

When I started this project, the goal was to do at least ONE video a week for 52 weeks, i.e. one WHOLE year.  The problem, though, is that, during the process of making these videos, there were two weeks where I actually filmed TWO videos.  The first one was in August, where I recorded a video for the Democratic convention (Video #15, “Shine 4 Obama”) and the second one was in January when, after George Bush left office, I recorded a song/video for “Goodbye Bush (Nah Nah Nah).”  The latter wasn’t going to be an official video, but it proved to be so popular that I had to make it an official one.

With that said, this week is video #52, which would technically complete all the required videos, but not the parameters of the project since this would only be week 50.  Yes, I am THAT much of a stickler for being exact about something!

However, in all my videos since #26 I’ve been counting down the number of videos I have left. What to do, what to do?!?

Then, after thinking about it, I realized that, for my “last” video, I could turn it into a trilogy of videos that all relate to each other!

And so, that’s what I decided to do: turn video #52 into three parts, a la “Star Wars.”  In doing so, I figured it would be easiest to do so by dividing the three parts into a beginning, middle, and end journey of my own, from when I started making songs in Virginia all the way to finally being able to move out to California.

And what better way to start off the song trilogy by making a video for a song I actually recorded back in 2006 that gave an illustration of my then-current situation?!?

The best part was that the shoot for it could be very, very simple.  Part of showing the “past” version of me is that I didn’t have all this fancy equipment that I had now, so making the video look basic in nature will provide great contrast to the videos I shoot later in the trilogy.

For this shoot, though, I wanted to re-create the day I recorded the freestyle in my Mom’s house.  Just me, a desk, a microphone, a computer, and a lot of angst and unknown.  I shot it in one take so people could get the feel of how the song came about, without making any distractions via video cuts and edits.  It also made editing this thing SO friggin’ easy!

FYI: In case you’re wondering, I have NO idea what I’ll be shooting for the second part of this trilogy, but the third part (and song) is already chosen.  All I can say is, it’s a song from my “Welcome 2 Cali” mixtape, so why not download it and take a listen?

Some Interesting Video Shoot Tidbits:

1. I wish I had a prop’s department.  The only items on my desk from 2006 is the microphone – that’s the actual one I used to record the song.  The laptop is from 2007, the phone is from the early 90s, the desk is one I just bought this year, and the sweatshirt I’m wearing… okay, that’s actually my Granddad’s sweater (R.I.P.) that I got in 2005, so me wearing that shirt is plausible.

2. I had to turn my desk to a different angle in my room because all the other angles would show off other parts of the room, which I didn’t live in back in 2006.  At least with a desk and a wall, it’s believable that it COULD be my Mom’s home office!

3. To film at the angle I did, I had to place the box my MAC computer came in onto my futon.  Yep, 52 videos later, I STILL have no one helping me film this stuff!

4. Because this is supposed to be me “in the past,” I decided to add the film grain effect.  Everyone knows that film grain depicts past scenarios, right?

5. Estimated time for editing: less than an hour.  The longest part was typing up this explanation!

That’s all for now!  Stay tuned next week for part 2 of the “Video 52” trilogy!

-A.P.T.

E-mail: APTsongs@hotmail.com

MySpace: http://www.MySpace.com/NotoriousAPT

Introducing… “Welcome to Cali,” The NEW A.P.T. Mixtape!

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!”

FREE DOWNLOAD! Click HERE to get it!

INSIGHT INTO A MIXTAPE:

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!):

01. Welcome 2 Cali Intro
02. Welcome 2 Cali
03. Y’all Haters Should Know
04. I Hate Grad School (Asher Roth “I Love College” Parody)
05. Fairytale… or Nightmare?
06. California Sunshine
07. Ahead of the Rest
08. Back to the Future
09. Interlude – Songs Between Albums
10. Super Mario Paperstyle
11. She Didn’t Want Me (“Here I Am” Paperstyle)
12. Interlude – Freestyling
13. Moonlight Freestyle
14. I Need a Job (Mobb Deep Beat Freetyle)
15. I Get Honeys (50 Cent “I Get Money” Parody)
16. I’m The Realest (feat. Jay-Z) Produced by King Kut

-A.P.T.

E-mail: APTsongs@hotmail.com

MySpace: http://www.MySpace.com/NotoriousAPT