BKNY
Fat Tony, Artist: Yeah, of course. So we filmed the BKNY video in 2012 and that video was very special because I did it with my friend, Ryan Muir, who is a photographer and that was his video. He also shot my recent Feeling Groovy video. And he shot the Hood Party video and the Macgregor Park video. And then BKNY, me and Goldeneye, my producer, aka Tom Cruz1, he wanted to do some kind of storyline with us selling the nutcracker2 because the whole video centers around J'ouvert, which is the West Indian day parade pre-party that happens the night before the parade. You party all night into the next morning and then you go to the parade. And at those events, they sell nutcrackers, right? Which is for lack of a better term like jungle juice, right?
Fat Tony, Artist: And we wanted to make a storyline where we are like the nutcracker dealers. And the guy at the beginning of the video is this rapper named Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire.3 We wanted him to play our boss like. We are basically some out-of-towners who are new to Brooklyn and we are trying to make it and we’re slipping the nutcrackers. And like this guy, eXquire, was like a real ass Brooklyn dude, he is our boss, and we fucking owe him. I mean we had a structure of every cameo in it would be artist friends of ours from Nick Catchdubs to Kool A. D. to Chippy Nonstop to Dark Sister.
Fat Tony, Artist: Yup, Nasty Nigel is in too. Basically, any of our friends who are artists are like in the music scene, we wanted them to play our customers, right? Outside of that, it was to show off Brooklyn, show off Bed-Stuy especially, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Flatbush4, all these areas that ring true when you think of Brooklyn. These are the neighborhoods that you visualize first. So we just went to J’ouvert. We figured that if we just go to J’ouvert and we’re hanging out, we’re gonna get some great footage of us dancing, getting oil thrown on us, and powder thrown on us, and paint thrown on us.
Fat Tony, Artist: It was a lot of fun. That was my first video that had a party, Noisy and Vice put together, a party for me at The Flat in Williamsburg, in South Williamsburg. And at the time, it was like the flat was a popping bar. And after our party, they were like, “Yo, this is the biggest night that we’ve ever had as far as the bar sales.” There was a line around the block the whole night. We had the cutest DJ. Just pretty much all of our friends from the scene, if they were in the video or just close to us, we invited them to come spin, Nigel too. And we just had a banger of a party. And that was really – that was the first time that we announced my Smart Ass Black Boy5 album. That was the first hit. The album came out June of 2013 and that party and the video release was November 2012.
On people thinking he is from Brooklyn because of BKNY
Fat Tony, Artist: Back in the day I did. Now, not so much. Like I think back in the day, there were a bunch of people who maybe didn’t know me being from Houston or was just like really new to me, period. So they just assumed that I was like a Brooklyn artist. You know what I mean?
Fat Tony, Artist: Even though I’ve lived there and I’ve lived in Los Angeles, in Mexico City and all kind of places, Houston is the place that I claim and really the only place I think is important to bring up when you talk about me because that’s who I am as an artist. I am a Houston artist.
All-time hip-hop name.
eXquire gave me arguably the best interview I’ve ever conducted, about his video Black Mirror. Look for that in the future!
I actually called Flatbush home for roughly 2 years! Shout out to 17th St and Newkirk!
Go listen if you haven’t. He even got one of 8 Despot verses ever!