Madlib: Slim's Return

with Director David Ahuja

The director of “Slim’s Return”, now is an excellent music producer in his own right, under the name Jacob 2-2.

(on landing the gig)

Yes, it was actually, it was certainly a strange confluence. I was working at a company called One9ine at the time, now defunct. But we’re basically a graphic design house mostly like well known for doing web stuff. Again, this is back in the early 2000s, when Flash was still a thing. And I was their in-house motion graphic person. I directed one video for this band Rainer Maria and it was like an emo band and it was all live action.. So One9ine helped produce that. And so, we had that and we had some other motion graphics stuff and I put together a reel. And what happened I believe is one of the partners of the company, his sister-in-law, actually worked at Capitol and knew that they were trying to do this video to promote the Shades of Blue album and Blue Note doesn’t really do videos. I think basically the whole way that the video got financed was through like Norah Jones’ success at that time. So, they were looking to do the video for one of the tracks of the album. I hate to admit it, I mean, I know who Madlib was but I wasn’t as familiar with as I am now. I mean now he’s one of my heroes!

But it was actually good because I wasn’t like super star struck when we were shooting. We wrote, I can’t remember how many treatments. I think we wrote like one or two treatments. And yeah they hired us to do the video. So, yeah, it was all through Capitol basically who owned Blue Note at that time. I don’t know if they still do. We’re mainly dealing with the people at Capitol and yeah Madlib flew into New York from L.A. And I think we shot there for three days. And then the post-process probably lasted for a little less than a month. But yeah that’s basically it happened. Sheer familial nepotism.

(on the video’s treatment)

I’m sure you’ve seen the video but I mean he was just down for whatever. I think everyone at Blue Note liked the idea that it was paying homage. We heard Blue Note, we’re like we have to do something that references…. The treatment we wrote that ended up in the video was like “okay we want to reference all of the great Blue Note album cover artwork and have him sort of exist in that world. And have that combine with the culture of Crate Digging. I think we wrote another treatment that was to another song that had more of an old school 70s Sesame Street feel to it. We pitched that as like him entering the world of  Blue Note artwork. I think everyone liked the idea because it was very much in line with what the album was doing, which matched to the classic era of Blue Note.

(on whether it took a crate digger to make the crate digger’s video)

I think not in the sense of how Madlib does. I’ll tell you one funny story about Madlib. So we shot in one record store and I think pretty much the entire time when he wasn’t on set he was in another record store. We asked somebody and basically just drove him like you know drove him around the record stores and I think he left New York with like 3000 dollars worth of records. I know that he had to ship them separately. But you know I’m sure that’s what he does in every city he’s ever in. But I know actually that time, I mean, I wasn’t that familiar with him at that time. I’ve gotten more into that hip-hop scene since then. I kind of stopped doing music videos after a couple of years just because I realized I’d rather eat [Laughs], and pay rent. But we knew that about Madlib though, so we wanted to have a scene in the record store and have it involve him you know with all these you know all Blue Note records. So, yes, like you know there’s definitely, we were aware of that part of the culture we want to be represented. That you assume that was something he was a crate digger that means we did our job well.

(on a key artistic decision)

We definitely had shots referencing certain covers. We went through a catalog. I think they have one of those books so you could collect all the classic artwork. I know there were a couple, there was definitely one Herbie Hancock record we were specifically referencing.

There’s a shot where he talks to the guy in the car and we shot that through a rearview mirror. I remember that was a record. I cannot recall now what it was. Because Blue Note often used a very blocky, wood print kind of style, we also looked to Saul Bass for graphic inspirations as well, When he goes to that sort of like Toontown at the end, this kind of cartoon world that we shot in green screen, that was very much a nod to Saul Bass as well. Then to have that same sort of 50’s feel. Of course obviously we used like a bunch of actual covers and deconstructed them. That very clean, blocky 50’s style is what we were referencing.

(on the grunt of animation)

Yeah, those shots were pretty intense. I was definitely up really late. I was up really late for good like three years of my career, I didn’t sleep, and during most of college. So yeah, that took up a lot of time. I mean I did most of the animation. Another one of the designers at One9ine did a lot of the animation like the animation at the end in the very last shot where he’s behind the turntables and all those photographs come flying towards them. Someone else did that and then we had a guy who was also helping with some of the 3D elements like the arrows that would spin around them. That whole sequence of the album covers  like breaking apart, that was yeah that was all me and lots of Red Bull. [Laughs]

(on whether he was provided art files for legendary Blue Note covers)

Oh, God, I don’t remember. I don’t remember if they sent us the art files or if we literally just scanned the covers. I think we had those records. I think we may have just scanned the covers. Because I don’t even know that they had access to the original artwork. I’m sure they have digital files of everything now but I don’t remember honestly.

(on whether Madlib, a legendary DJ, was actually performing for the video’s juggling scene)

He was pantomiming it. He actually, he asked me how flashy he should be. He said “I could be very flashy.” I was like, “no just do what you normally do.” So, he’s exactly what you’d expect him to be, very quiet, super, super chill. The one thing I remember was every time I directed him, like when we were shooting the green screen, we would have to have him walk in a very kind of slow, stilted way because there was no other space. So I’m like “can you do that the same, but a little bit slower?” And he’ll be like, “Nah” and I’d be kind of like, “Oh, OK.” He’d be like “I’m just playing.” Like everything, every direction I have given him, I’d be like “Is that cool? and he’d be like “nah.” Now that’s fine like every, every shot. But yeah he’s super chill.

(on the processing of combining green screen, live footage, and animation)

When we shot all the green screen stuff first, I remember that because he came into the office and we had this just the green screen set up. And then, yeah, I think we shot for two days. We shot in that loft that he’s in in the beginning and the end and then we shot around the city a bunch of places. This was 2006 so I believe we shot it on MiniDV, which is amazing to think of now. [Laughs] Doing green screen with MiniDV but we did and that’s another part of the reason why we wanted to give it sort of  clunky aesthetic because green screen with MiniDV never really looked very good. So it will always have edges so we just said, “OK we’ll just keep the edges in.” And we’ll just round everything off. I wanted to look like it was handmade. If you look at it like some old stuff even as late as the 70s when they would you know superimpose live action onto animation. Like TRON. You know that was all shot on black and they cut the Kodaliths frame by frame. So you can imagine how time intensive that was. So, yeah that green screen stuff and then everything else was done an After Effects. Some 3D stuff was done in Maya at that time, which now you could actually pull and review an After Effects pretty easily.

(on locations)

That was probably First Avenue L. I think we shot mostly in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and then the record store is on Avenue A. Yeah I’m pretty sure the train station was the First Avenue L Station that he’s walking out of. Our office at that time was on 21st street? Yeah, we’re on 21st street. That’s where we shot the green screen stuff. Then the loft was some friend of ours and that was also in Williamsburg kind of close to the water.

(on Madlib being spotted)

I don’t remember anything like that happening. Like I said he was super chill and you know he’s kind of a very laid back guy so he doesn’t really draw a lot of attention to himself. I think also that time he was still, I just find him more unknown than he is now or lesser known. So, I think even in Williamsburg. There might have been some people who recognized him but I don‘t remember anyone coming up to us.

(on the casting the record store clerk and patrons)

Yeah that’s an actual employee. I can’t remember his name either but he yeah he worked at, I think was Sound Library. He worked there, he opened it up for us and I think we went there and met him earlier because we were like, “Oh, who should be the guy behind the counter? And we were just like, “Well, why not just that guy?” All we got to do is say hello to him. That guy behind that counter worked there and the other two people in record stores were just friends of ours. Actually the girl in the record store who blows the bubble that actually was one of our partner’s sisters-in-law. I think that’s why she’s in the video because she helped provide the opportunity to [make the video] so that was her reward.

(on the gentlemen in the car)

One of the guys in the car was the doorman at our office. [Laughs]. His name was Junior. The  other  guy in the car I don’t remember. I think that was a friend of his and I don’t remember where we got the car.. We did hire a producer on it. He was a friend of ours. I’ve not talked to him in a million years, I should really reach out to. Yeah, I can’t remember where we got the car.

(on working with children and animals)

Well, we did the two things you’re not supposed to do. We worked with children and animals. [Laughs]. The children were definitely easier to work with than the animal. The animal at the end of it is that dog and that was again one of the people from the company. That was his dog We wanted him to run across at the last minute and we had one guy with the treat on one side of the camera and the other guy, like holding him on the other side of the camera. I remember that. The kids were were fine. They were easy to work with, I remember that was a fun day.

Yeah, funny story, actually just you know the usual you know when we shoot a low budget music video, it’s run and gun. I remember just being constantly behind schedule and the producer would say like, “I’m not trying to tell you how much time you have. I’m just going to tell you, you don’t have much.” [Laughs] And we have tons of things that he just would not tell me so I wouldn’t worry about them. I have no idea if he would even recognize me or remember me to this day. But I just remember him being yeah super chill and everything just like, “Can you do that?” “Nah, nah, just playing..” That was my man take away from him.

(on his occasional humblebrag)

Yeah. Yeah. [Laughs] making music now having some people I, you know, just talk to her on Sound Cloud you were like sort of you know in that whole of like lo-fi hip hop scene you know and I’ll just have to mention, “Oh yeah, I directed a video for Madlib back in the day and they’re like “What?” [Laughs] I have photos of it somewhere. I have actually searched like all of my hard drives. I remember the producer emailed me a bunch of photos with me directing Madlib and I keep wanting to post them on Facebook as a humblebrag but I can’t find them anywhere.

(when I originally titled my book For The Love, it was heavily impacted by this quote from David and a discussion with director Greg Brunkalla about the total grind of making music videos. It was not a platitude about how hip-hop is done ‘for the love’ of hip-hop but rather meant to make people aware that these directors were really only making these pieces of fine art for the love, when in fact they should be paid, or paid far more as well.

Maybe you’ve heard this from a lot of people, the thing with music videos and the reasons I stopped doing them is because, and it’s probably even worse now, because the music industry had no money and has no money to spend on music videos. There’s this model for getting videos made for a small artist and it’s basically “let’s find a young really talented person who was willing to you know work for very little money and just give them a lot of creative control and allow them to express themselves until they get burnt out and either quit doing music videos or move on to commercials or something else.” I feel like that’s the sort of classic story about music video directors I’m sure you‘ve heard.

And you know and I really didn’t want to direct commercials because it’s one thing when you’re doing designs for clients and you know then they can always change it and then they can macro manage or something. When you’re actually producing, when you’re actually shooting, and the client is on set and they are spending a lot of money, they do feel like they have the right to macro manage everything it’s such a pain. I just went through an experience like that with a television network. And, yeah, I said “No, I’d rather just do design and animation for whoever and my own creative work. I want just to keep to myself.” And for now my sort of MO is to work on a big client project that might last three to four months and then take a month off and just work on my own music or my own personal art projects. I mean you get less recognition although I don’t know I don’t even pay attention like music video directors anymore. I don’t know if music video directors get a lot of recognition these days. But, you know, I feel like you're less compromised. You have more freedom to do what you want to do and you are actually able to “feed” and clothe yourself.

Yeah. I remember those days I think the last like the music video I’ve pitched, you know the project was really small and I particularly interested in particularly liked and so you know I was working with this, OK these are the parameters, like not a lot of money something like the band will like and something that I will be proud to put in my reel even though I don’t like the band because there’s not a lot of money. So I. But they’re doing this for me and not get paid and make sure the band likes it and it can be done for like 10,000 dollars or whatever. And I just you know I bled sweat and blood onto the computer like trying to figure something out. And then it didn’t get picked and then I saw the video and it was remarkably close to my treatment.