CLIPSE INTERVIEW FROM GHETTO PENTHOUSE TV DVD
Once upon a time before YouTube, DVDs were how videos were spread outside of TV. I was living a pretty unbelievable lifestyle. It was possible for someone to see me in Brooklyn on Wednesday and I could fly out the same night to Germany. I would have a show in Germany on Thursday, France on Friday, Switzerland on Saturday and fly out Sunday morning in time to catch the Sunday night football game when I got home to the USA. If you saw me on Monday and I didn’t say anything you would have no idea of what just happened. In 2001 I decided I wanted to share these experiences and my travels with the masses. My dad had a VHS-C camcorder that I claimed. It was the type with the small vhs tape you put into the regular vhs case and put in the VCR. This was long before HD. I bought a firewire transfer card that came with some basic editing software and this was my first journey into film making.
In a few months I had recorded significant footage from solo dj shows I was doing internationally and concerts I was doing with my partners Das Efx. I went out and bought a small DV digital video camera to get better footage. I reached out to a few artists I knew to do some interviews like Smif N Wessun, Thirstin Howl III, Un Pacino, 5th Platoon Djs and others and got some exclusive footage from inside of some of NYC’s underground strip clubs. I locked in at the lab and taught myself how to edit. I scored the project with instrumentals I produced to avoid any copyright problems. Not long after I had completed my first DVD project, Dangerous Minded The DVD.
While I will never claim to be the first to drop a street DVD I definitely was one of them. At the time Smack was starting to heat up the street and All Access and Rewind by DJ Whoo Kid were out but there were not many others at this time. Most were focused on mc battles and rappers from the Tri-State area but none were showing the crazy international footage I had or the focus on the dj aspect of things. The DVD did well for me and helped to distinguish myself from a lot of my other dj peers. After viewing this project it was clear I was more than just a mixtape dj but also a music producer, film maker and one of the top performance djs in the world. I wasn’t interested in dropping dvds regularly as this was more of a statement project. It elevated my status in the game greatly. I cannot tell you how many people came to me and told me they saw clips of my DVD in Harlem Music Hut as someone in there apparently liked it and it would play regularly in the store. This DVD influenced many people who would later to go to release their own lines of DVDs or start YouTube channels as they said they either bought it or saw it in Harlem Music Hut and it inspired them. While the video quality was less than broadcast quality the segments were raw and authentic. It let some of these other aspiring dvd directors know they could just use what gear they had and didn’t need Hollywood budget cameras as long as the footage was entertaining.
The DVD game grew at a staggering rate from the time I dropped Dangerous Minded The DVD and the streets would soon be saturated with upstart street dvd brands. I would drop a second Dangerous Minded project in 2005 that would be a full studio album along with a dvd. Once again I was trying to raise the bar and distance myself from the competition. I released my 3rd and final DVD in 2007 which was Ghetto Penthouse TV. It was around this time that YouTube started to emerge and make DVDs obsolete.
I will be uploading some of these segments from these dvds and here is one from Ghetto Penthouse TV featuring The Clipse. Enjoy.
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