Murder Dog gtw
 

DJ Vlad
Interview by Black Dog Bone

May 2008

Continued from vol. 15 #2

Which other Bay artists are featured in the film?
Keak Da Sneak is in it. Mistah F.A.B. is in it. Messy Marv, E-40, J-Diggs, Bavgate…a lot of people are in there.

What motivated you to do this film?
For the main motivation was just being from the Bay. Being able to document the place where I grew up. No one else has really done it. There have been a lot of DVD’s but nobody has really told the story. Especially because I live in New York now, and when you talk to people in New York they don’t even know that the Black Panthers came from Oakland. MC Hammer—he’s in the movie also—a lot of people don’t realize MC Hammer came from Oakland. The biggest motivation was to document the great history of where I came from.

How do you go about presenting the history of the Hyphy movement and Mac Dre’s life? How is the film set up?

It’s about the Bay. We go over there and peak into the culture of the sideshows. We go into the dancing. We go into the different neighborhoods and show how the dancing is different. We go into the drug culture—the Ecstasy as well as the marijuana, the cannabis clubs. We go into the clubs themselves and film people. We go into the music. We go into what “hyphy” means. Then after we cover all that we go into the Mac Dre story, all the way up to the murder.

How far back do you go in the history?

The film starts off showing how Black people first came to the Bay Area after World War II. We talk about how Jazz started happening in San Francisco. San Francisco used to be called “The Harlem of the West”. Then it shows how a lot of Black people ended up moving to Oakland, and that’s where the Black Panthers formed. Around that time Funk music came out of Oakland with groups like Sly and the Family Stone. Then we describe how the crack epidemic effected the Black communities in the Bay Area. How the drug dealers and the pimps took over the streets. Then how Hip Hop came and actually gave a voice to the people who didn’t have a voice at the time. From there we break down different aspects of the culture—the ghostriding, the music, the fashion, the dancing. All of the stuff people have heard about, we explain it and show how it fits in with everything else.

Who wrote the story for the movie?
I wrote it along with a guy named Razlo and David Wilson.

Have you done any other films or is this your first?
This is my first real film. I’ve put out other DVD’s, like DVD magazines. This is my first real film. I DJ for Keak Da Sneak. I’ve been involved in the scene for a long time.

How did it go? As a DJ, making a film must be a different experience.

It definitely takes a lot of time. A lot of patience. It takes a good amount of money. But I think putting together music and putting together music with images is a similar process. It’s different, but the basis is more or less the same. The creative process is the same. I spent years putting music together, arranging things in the computer. It’s pretty much the same process as putting a film together. The editor, David Wilson, he’s worked with Quentin Tarrantino and Martin Scorsese and all these big, Oscar-winning directors. It was good to have the guidance of someone like that.

What were you trying to achieve with this film? You were trying to show the world aboutthe Bay?
The main focus for me was the Bay. The Bay has been hot and then it gets cold. A couple of years ago with the Hyphy movement it was getting really hot. But I don’t think enough big songs kept coming. “Tell Me When to Go” was big, “Super Hyphy” was big. Then “
Ghostriding” did a little something. But then there weren’t a whole lot of songs so people started to lose interest on a national level. I’m hoping that a movie like this will help bring the interest back. Even all the way in New York you hear people saying “stunna shades”; people say “yadada mean”; people say “playa hata” and a lot of words that came out of the Bay. People know about “ghostridin the whip”, they’ve seen the videos on TV. But I don’t think anyone really understand the whole story behind it. I showed the movie in New York last month to a New York audience and everyone loved it. People stood up and applauded when it was done. One thing that Mac Dre had that a lot of artists don’t have was the visual element. It wasn’t just the music. He had the DVD’s and the crazy dancing and the clothing and the glasses and everything. I’m hoping that if we show this to a national audience that the whole country will be able to understand and appreciate what’s going on in the Bay Area.

 


DJ Vlad
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