Independent Hip Hop

Unlike the rest of the performers, Bamm was lined up because he thought Todd was handing out free porn.

The Illamental fellas were at it again. Running around Los Angeles on some guerrilla ish to get another video in the can (we don’t need no stinkin’ permits!). And with one eye open for five-oh, and the other watching for the local crackhead with a penchant for selling video equipment, the video shoot for “Reasons” by The Vox Merger went off without a hitch.

With Todd Angkasuwan at the helm (much props again to Todd for blessing us), we got this baby knocked out all in one day. Started out early morning in the depths of LA county. You may notice from some of the shots, we’re not rocking the kind of garb you’d expect dudes from sunny Cali to wear. Jackets and hoodies and what not. No, we were not imitating our favorite east coast rappers. It was cold dammit! Actually, we were expecting rain, and Todd thought we’d be able to get some badass rain shots. Not a drop in sight, though. As you can see, even Mother Nature has it our for your boys. I bet if we hadn’t wanted rain… bah lemme stop right there.

Mighty Ro wonders if this shot is worth the risk of getting clobbered by a Mack truck

Speaking for myself, one of my favorite parts to do was the “line up” shot where you see everyone popping out behind the person in the spotlight. Mainly because it was somewhat death defying for us to make our necessary rotations with cars whizzing by at 50 mph. I can only imagine what people said to themselves as they drove past us. “Who are these idiots in the middle of the goddamn street this early in the morning?! I wanna smoke what they’re smoking!” … or something along those lines. We’d also get the occasional driver who would slow down to get a closer look at who was in the video. Once they realized that it was not Jin doing a collabo with the Dogg Pound, they’d speed off, shaking their fists.

Little did Akim know, while he was doing his cool guy closeup, he was getting styled on by Mario and Erwin

You may have also noticed the “party scene” in the video. Again, no fakin’ the funk here as well, folks. While it made for a great atmosphere and some very eye appealing camera shots, this set-up scenario quickly evolved into a full blown shindig – complete with boozing and prayers to the porcelain god. Surprisingly though, it wasn’t me this time (nah I won’t put anyone on blast…. unless the price is right). And of course, the poor hosts of the house had a big cleanup job to handle afterward. Hey now – Bamm Tronics helped too!

All in all, ’twas a good time for all. Vox got a hot video, Illamental as a whole got another notch on the ol’ belt, and we hope you at least get a couple of good head nods out of it all.  If you haven’t done so yet, get a gander at the finished product that is Reasons.  Mighty Ro & Akim would sure appreciate it.

Now… where is that line for the free porn really at?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 5:20 am and is filed under Make The Music, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.