Viewing archive for the ‘Anecdotes’ Category
13How I met Rushka: my shoot for L’Uomo Vogue
One day in March I got an email out of the blue about appearing in L’Uomo Vogue magazine. Next thing you know I was in a small photo studio in Soho. This shoot was unlike any other shoot I’ve ever done, for a few reasons. First of all it was quick, we did 5 looks in under an hour. Second, it was all about the stylist. The stylist! I later realized that Rushka Bergman is a name that rings bells. A contributing fashion editor for the magazine, but also “Michael Jackson’s personal stylist for 3 years” (she repeated this many times), Rushka spoke with an Eastern-European accent coupled with very dramatic intonations. When she completed an outfit she would take a glance at it and say: “divine!” Normally I’d be hands-on with the choice of clothes, I’d give a lot of input on what I’d normally wear… but when dealing with Vogue it’s a different set of rules. As Rushka pointed out, “we know fashion 6 months before the rest of the world does, you have to trust us. I’ve done 300 features in Vogue, trust me. Michael trusted me.” Okay! I later realized that Kanye tried trusting her last year, which led to Rushka styling Pusha T for the VMA’s, hence Pusha’s line “Italian Vogue styled a n*gga for a minute rhyme.” Maybe that relationship didn’t last but I got along fine with the lady, she had me cracking up half the time. She would look at me and say: “Look at his eyes! So powerful. So kind.” I couldn’t help but chuckle. Then she would get an idea: “Okay let’s play,” and she’d throw some clothes on me while we were shooting, swapping out jackets and coats, throwing a top hat on my head, tying a bow on a necktie. “This is fine art”, she said. She requested a huge piece of cardboard and made me wrap it around me like a cocoon. “This one is for a museum!”, she declared. “Don’t worry, we’re going to make you look like God.” I’m not sure if the divine ambition was realized with me, but in any case it gave me a funny story to tell. I remember sitting in the cab on my way home and thinking, “what just happened? Did I just wear leather pants?” Then I went home and read her Wiki entry. It reassured me. It was an honor working with her!
Check out the behind-the-scenes video of the shoot HERE (tell the Italians we need an embed option).
Czech fan mail… amazing
This mysterious envelope came to the Fool’s Gold office. It included a letter and something wrapped in a folded magazine page, sealed with scotch tape. I opened that makeshift sub-envelope while reading the letter and saw that it enclosed 1 dollar. Here’s the gist of the letter: fan in Czech Republic wanted to buy “Barbra Streisand” legally but all the territory restrictions blocked off his country. So his solution was to download it from a blog and mail us $1! As he wrote in his letter: “1 buck (or duck?)”. Amazing.
Filip, you’re the man. The Duck salutes you.
How I produced “Pro Nails”
Being on tour with Kid Sister has got me reminiscing on the songs we made together in the early days of Fool’s Gold, “Pro Nails” being the most known. Let’s take a trip down memory lane to 2006 when that song was first crafted and examine the DAW set-up that I was using.
I met Kid Sis in the summer of ’06 and pretty quickly we decided to work on some music together. I was itching to try some new sounds with my production. Up until then, every track I made was sample-based. I used to play samples (and often scratch them) straight from my DJ mixer into Protools, and then edit them into beats. If you listen to “Step Off” which was done just a few months prior, not only was the sample triggered off vinyl but even the drums were scratched — you can hear the different tones on consecutive kick drums, coming from the stab scratches on the record. I loved doing that type of beat but I could hardly play these songs in my sets. I wanted my tracks to reflect my DJ sets more, so I started experimenting with uptempo beats. This type of production would rely less on samples and edited audio, there would be more synths and programmed drums, and I didn’t like the way Protools handled MIDI at the time (I think this was on Protools 6 or 7). So I started looking for other DAW’s. After years of being bound to my record collection at home, I was also transitioning to a mobile set-up.
Behind the scenes at the Complex Macklobro shoot
As mentioned before, the current issue of Complex has my brother and me doing the fashion spread. Here’s a video showing some wet willies from the day of shoot.
Youtube means nothing is forgotten
Here I am digging up some old video appearances… You can find any and everything on the intertubes nowadays!
Bran Van 3000 was basically the pet project of a film director from Montreal called James DiSalvio, hence the line about “came over with a script”. If I recall correctly his family owned a bunch of clubs in the city (I was 14 at the time). I had just won the Montreal DMC championships and this dude James asked me to do a scratch intro for his band’s video… which turned into somewhat of a hit. People at my school didn’t even know I was a DJ yet, so they were all confused when they saw me on TV.
Shades Of Culture were veterans of the Montreal hip hop scene. When my brother and I started doing our thing, these guys were early supporters and a big co-sign for us locally. Dave produced this track off their album, and that’s me at 0:30 DWELLIN IN THE LAB. Please note: Jim Jones wasn’t the first rapper to put sign language in his video.
The Allies = my old DJ crew from my battling days, alongside Craze, Infamous, Develop, Spictakular and J-Smoke. (Later on Klever joined the crew.) In 2000 we made an EP for Asphodel, an experimental record label from San Francisco that also released records by the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the X-Ecutioners and DJ Spooky. This is the video for Infamous’ song off the EP… In recent years Inf has produced tracks for Lil Wayne (“Mr. Carter”, “I Am Not A Human Being”), Fat Joe (“Hey Joe”), Kid Sister (“Don’t Stop Movin”) and more. This video looks like a school project. #noshamethough
The video for Kanye’s “Workout Plan” was shot in my early days on the Kanye job. I make a comically short appearance at 2:18, next to GLC showing some appreciation for the shapely vixen in front of us. This is probably Kanye’s worst video and includes a vignette with the very forgettable Lil Jon remix. On the bright side, I met Vida Guerra, as well as another video chick who spoke french but whose name escapes me (not Tracey Ross). Here’s a little secret: the man in the bear costume was Don C. This song is also the first time I heard the word “juke” and saw footwork. The talkbox at the end was dope…
If I was Greek…
A lot of people tell me I look Greek. For real. Maybe it’s related to how I supposedly look like a young George Michael, who is also Greek (first person to suggest this was P-Thugg). But what if I was REALLY Greek? DJ Mehdi sends me this image from Athens with no explanation.
Make Something!! workshop
Last week I did a workshop in New York for the Make Something!! School in association with Nike. They’ve been getting people like Todd James, Carri Munden from Cassette Playa, Todd Selby and more to come in and work with teenagers from the City. They’re all preparing a big blowout ceremony that will be taking place next weekend at the World Basketball Festival. In my case, I was asked to help the kids come up with a 1 minute musical performance. Check the video from Nike above, and more info on the Make Something!! blog.
Trizzy luh the kids.
New Chromeo single: “Don’t Turn The Lights On”
I have an older brother, his name is David and he has a band called Chromeo. You know this, right? I just need to make sure once in a while.
(Are you following them on twitter yet? They’re new in town.)
Chromeo have a new album just around the corner, and having witnessed the brick-by-brick assembly of that beast, I can’t wait for the world to hear it. Dave always sings me his songs before he records them. Somewhere on one of my old MiniDV tapes I have footage of him doing Momma’s Boy on the air-Wurli and air-bells when it was just in his head… I need to dig that up. But I digress. They recorded the new album at a studio just a few blocks from my apartment, so I’d go visit them every evening and was the go-to “how does this sound?” guy. I even tracked their vocals on one of the songs. But truthfully, the way they work is extremely self-contained. If they do reach out to someone on the outside, it’ll be some random saxophonist, which has happened a few times already.
Now it’s all done, and it is my pleasure to present to you: “Don’t Turn The Lights On”.
Buy it on iTunes! (That’s the US link but it’s also out in the UK.)
When Trizzy met Drizzy
For those of you who checked out Drake’s album you may have noticed I’m scratching on song #5, “Show Me A Good Time”. Here’s the story of how that came about.
You could think that there was some sort of Canadian connection, or even a Kanye connection for that matter. But there wasn’t. When So Far Gone came out last year and Drizzy’s buzz went through the roof of the stratosphere of the ceiling of the galaxy, I remember thinking “wow, this is interesting, this is the first time there’s a Canadian rapper that I know absolutely nothing about.” Canada, while being a huge country on the atlas, has a very small music biz. Having been active in it for over a decade, I can tell you that usually everyone knows everyone. But the truth is, I left Montreal 4 years ago and Drake is pretty young, so in my view he just came out of nowhere.
Um, a billboard?
If you’ve walked around the mean streets of New York in the last 2 weeks, you may have seen one of these snazzy Bushmills billboards, including this one with the FG crew next to the Alife Rivington Club. Or maybe you saw the Chromeo one in Williamsburg which is, oh I don’t know, 20 times bigger:
They actually painted them! It was a real trip to watch this guy paint my brother’s sideburns.
For more pics of the campaign you can check out the Bushmills Facebook page.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes video from the shoot itself, at Jonathan Mannion’s fabled studio.
