https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GiYKevY2nk
This track was ambitious for me from the start. The beat came together by accident, where I thought I had turned off one of the samples but instead they both played on top of each other, and it kinda worked! I sent it along with a couple of other beat to RAVEN NEVA MORE and he absolutely took it to a level I wasn’t even ready for. Forreal it took me a bit to get my verse together after he sent his over!
His verse had the CRULUV line that became a sort of chorus I would chant when working on the song. From there I decided I’d try and make a lil choir out of that, and had a few friends come into the studio during a CREW brunch to record themselves singing CRULUV over the beat. I’m not the best when it comes to mixing vocals so it was a big challenge for me to try and make that work in the studio. I eventually dug what I had but still needed to put in some more work to make the song feel finished. I was listening to a bunch of PUTS at the time and it finally dawned on me to cut some MF records over the chorus and call it good. I was soooo overthinking it. From there, I added a bunch more CREW samples including the Count Bass D part that starts it off and the Manimal piece that ends the song. LOVE
The video ended up being just as ambitious as the track. I sent a few different songs to Andrew Graziano to see what he might dig, and asked if I could record him doing some flatland BMX. I was stoked he chose this track (cuz of the CRU / RAD reference) and met up with him one morning, a dozen donuts on my front rack for him and any other folks that were art the park. I set up 3 cameras and recorded him for about an hour. Basically ending up with waaaaay too much footage to cut down. I’d slowly work on the video from time to time but just couldn’t seem to finish it. Finally I just decided I needed to call it good! So I took a few days to grab my fav parts, whip it together, and call it good. Love how it turned out and LOVE having so much CREW involved on the project.
Quick side-note — on my way home from the park I decided to take a detour to hit ‘the loop’ bike path. I came up on a woman selling some stuff at a table in a dirt lot. She had some tapes, games, and this siiiic golden retriever pillow LOL. I asked if she took Venmo and she laughed saying that she has no idea what that is so probably not. We joked about trading some donuts and she said honestly she was hungry af and felt stranded in the dirt lot with no food. I ended up giving her about 8 fresh Le Caves donuts for that dog pillow and biked away cracking up!
CREW
Flatland BMX magic: Andrew Graziano @andrewjgraziano on IG Rap magic: Raven Neva More @ravennevamo1 on IG Forest camera magic: J Burns Beach camera magic: Rogelio Garcia Crew magic aka The CRULUV Choir: Maren, Becca, Christian, Abigail, Joe, Gabe, & STLB3
From the Whale of a Sale EP avail streaming and on cassette: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/illslur/whale-of-a-sale
++(peace to you + your crew)++