Shabooty Interview Series: DJDave (Hyundai Commercial White Rapper)

DJDave became a youtube sensation in June of this year, with the above video (top left) — Whole Foods Parking Lot rap. Now the video is at over 3 Million views, and counting, and if you read this interview, you will find out if it was with or without the blessing of ‘Whole Foods Market IP, L.P.’

More recently, you may have seen DJDave in a Hyundai car commercial, which has aired mainly during NBA coverage — (top right). This latter video has caused a storm of haters on Twitter, with Hyundai being in the Top 10 Trending Topics, two nights ago. Most people on Twitter however hadn’t seen the Whole Foods Parking Lot rap, and didn’t know where DJDave was coming from. This interview will hopefully serve to change all of that… so without further adieu, here’s the ‘Shabooty Interview’ of DJDave!

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Shabooty: Did you ever hear from Whole Foods corporate about the video?
DJDave: Yeah, they actually wrote an email pretty early on, just after about 5,000 views, really quickly after we put it up, they found it, and wrote an email. I thought it was gonna be like a cease-and-desist or just some sort of you know, we didn’t have permission to shoot there and all that, but they actually loved it and just wanted to get permission to put it up on their site, so they were cool with us, and we were cool with them.

On the Hyundai ad, how much creative freedom did they give you?
They wrote [me], they were looking for – “hey, we saw Whole Foods, we liked what you did.” And I was like, “okay, do you want us to produce the whole commercial for you, do you want us to edit, shoot, etc.?” They went back and forth on it for a while, they ended up hiring their own production company to do the actual shooting, editing, etc., but they wanted just original music, so they basically gave me a really simple brief and they said, “our car has these mirrors, and a backseat heater, and a rear-defroster, so write a rap about that that’s like funny.” And I’m like okay… so yeah, it was a little challenging, but I write music for commercials for a living. You know, that’s a big part of my main day-gig, so I feel like it’s kinda down my alley and I was just able to take some of what I knew they liked from the song of the Whole Foods thing, and just apply it to that product. It was a little bit of a challenge, because it’s like, I know for a fact, that certain things about shopping at Whole Foods are funny to me, and then trying to apply that to a product, it could be a stretch, but I think it turned out funny, I was alright with it.

Did you see last night Hyundai was trending on Twitter after the commercial aired on the NBA game?
I actually didn’t see it, my Twitter game is a little bit low right now, I’m trying to get my act together, but I’m guessing there was some slightly hateful commentary. What were they saying?

Well, my follow-up question was gonna be, when people goof on the Hyundai ad on Twitter, are you offended? What do you say to the haters?
Well, you know, first and foremost, I think if somebody saw the Whole Foods thing, and they understood sorta where that was coming from, and understood the style of humor, and then saw Hyundai, they’d be like, “Oh, okay, that’s this thing, that’s a particular type of humor, I get it.” But even myself included, if I just saw that on TV, I’d be like, who is this joker. I don’t really feel offended, obviously I want stuff that I do be appreciated and there’s zero chance everybody’s gonna love everything that you do, period. Especially if it’s some white dude rapping on a car commercial, on some Knicks game, it’s gonna be instant Twitter craziness, but I’m alright with it. I like Katt Williams the comedian, he’s like, “if you got twenty haters, you should try to get forty by the end of the year.” That’s fine with me, hate away. I know who I am and I know what I do, and I also know where my influences come from and what makes me tick and my friends do, too, so that’s enough for me. It’s a gig, I’ve done music for so many commercials through the years, just the fact that I happen to be in one is a little bit of a shift for me, but it’s all good. I’m good. Like what did they say [on Twitter], I’m just curious, were there any ones that stood out?

I can go back and see. The one thing I will say though, is you had a good point, some people were talking trash, but some people hadn’t seen the Whole Foods video, so it didn’t resonate with them, but I obviously had seen it, so I was telling the people that hadn’t seen it, “before you jump to all of these conclusions, peep the Whole Foods video.” And I sent a couple of bloggers the youtube link to the WF video. And as soon as they saw it last night, they were like, “oh shit, that video just made my life!” As soon as they saw the WF video, everybody understood it.
Yeah, I do think it makes a difference, you know what I mean?

As far as what they were saying, let me pull up one from last night. This one chick I am friends with said, “wtf is this Hyundai commercial, I would never buy one after watchin’ that mess!”
Right. Yeah you know, I do get to see… “ashamed to be a white person…”

At the end of the day, here’s the way I would look at it, essentially Hyundai was in the Top 10 trending topics in the USA, so people are talking about the commercial.
There is that old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I’m not really tripping too hard, I am happy to try and do a good job for somebody. If they come to me for a piece of creative work and I’m trying to execute it to the best of my ability, ya know, if my persona kinda rubs people the wrong way, or somebody sees this white dude rapping, the other thing that I think Whole Foods [video] would help people understand, you could probably tell if you really know hip-hop, or you understand where it’s coming from, that I’m not styling myself as a rapper, or that I don’t really think I’m like some actual emcee, and that’s kind of part of the joke. I mean I’ve freestyled with friends and messed around growing up like everybody else. But I think if someone takes it as like, “damn dude, they just got this amateur ass white dude to rap, and that’s just garbage.” It’s kinda missing the joke, but you know, everybody’s not gonna get every joke, so ya know, it’s fine with me.

Did Hyundai give you a free car?
No, no free car. Ya know, they paid me a creative fee to write the music for it, and my friends and I, for being in the commercial, they’re signatory to the Screen Actor’s Guild, the ad agency in Ocean, so I got a couple of the guys from [my collective] Fog-And-Smog, under the Taft–Hartley [Act], so they could be in the union, and get a day’s pay and then also get residual payments for when it runs. So hopefully there’s some bread in it for them, for that, ya know. It’s not some, ya know, usually people think like, “oh, I saw you on TV,” you must have a mansion. It’s like, “not really.” That’s not really the way it works. It’s all good, it wasn’t like a free gig, but it’s not like the other side of some crazy divide or whatever.

What rappers were you big fans of growing up?
The sweet spot is all from the Tribe [Called Quest], De La [Sol], what people would refer to as the golden era of hip-hop, the early to mid 90′s. I love Rakim, early on, Guru from Gangstarr, and KRS-ONE was always a favorite of mine, especially in the late 80′s. I also grew up in the Bay area, so I listened to a lot of Too$hort, later on, E40. I was in LA for the past 20 years… I’m just a fan of good emcees, I mean, I’m a fan of hip-hop ever since I’ve been little, but I’m a DJ first, and that’s where I first got into the music, and I’m a drummer, and those are my instruments. And I have to mention too, that the Whole Foods Parking Lot video and the subsequent stuff that has come out of it, ya know, I did that song but these friends of mine came together and we formed a group of like minded individuals, this FogAndSmog collective group, that ya know, this couldn’t have happened without any of them. These guys all played a really vital role in putting stuff together to get it seen and to really execute what you end up seeing.

Though you are kind of like the face of it all, now.
Def. from the Hyundai ad, to me, that’s cool, I’m down for the commercial thing. I’m flattered and glad to have it out there, and if people like it or don’t like it, that’s cool, but I would just as soon get with these dudes and keep doing fun creative things that we can stand behind, ’cause that’s where it came from, and hopefully where it’s going. Everybody is looking at the end game of especially in art and media and entertainment, what’s the future landscape of film, of music, how do you make a living in these areas, and we’re all hustling our various endeavors, so the question comes up, how do you make money, how do you do these things, licensing, commercials, etc. And it’s all very real, but I think if you don’t keep doing stuff that inspires you, and is exciting, and makes people laugh, or whatever your medium, then you start to lose your fire for it, you need to keep being creative.

When you go into the Whole Foods store right now, are you recognized?
It’s funny, the week we put it up on youtube, it got a million hits in a week, so I was like, “wow, this is going crazy, when I go back there, it’s gonna be nuts.” And I went in there and it was like NOTHING. Not a soul. Not a word, crickets, no one even effing recognized me, zero. I’ve gone back there many times with my wife and here and there, there would be a little nod, or somebody would be like, “oh, you did that shiet!” And I’m like, “yeah, man!” But it’s not crazy, it’s pretty mellow, to be honest.

Are you that much of an organic food/health nut, or is that shtick?
Nah, not really, only so far in, I do buy those products sometimes, I get chicken there, ’cause I figure okay, it’s probably getting to my plate in a better way, than some other product from some other place, ya know what I’m saying, so I’ll buy some organic chicken or some kale salad, or some couscous. It’s part of my life in so far as I can joke about it, but I’m not much of a foodie and I’m not super on some vegan/organic/or any def. not any vegetarian, or anything like that, so… partly. Enough to know about it to make a joke, but not heavy into it. I try to eat healthy.

So with the Hyundai thing, you had to split the check up with your whole crew?
Nah, the creative fee, for doing the music and the lyrics, I used it, I kept it because I figure I did the music for the Whole Foods thing, it was kind of like what started that part of stuff out, and they came… And I was pretty adamant with the ad agency when they wrote, and I said, “Hey, what do you want from us, what different aspects of what we do?” At that point, we had just done Whole Foods, so it was like okay, you want us to do the video, and they basically said, they were kinda going back and forth like I said before, but they eventually said they only wanted music and lyrics and our performance, but thankfully I was able to get some of the guys in it, I was like at least let them be extras, but as far as the creative fee, that’s what I do, is the music, so that’s how that works out.

You do musical scores for commercials, so it’s not fair to characterize you as just a Youtube guy, right?
Oh, you can characterize me however you want, what I do for a living is commercial and film scores. And so I have a website, DavidWittman.com and I put up some of the spots I’ve worked on and the films I’ve worked on, and you could download the scores, and check ‘em out.

Have you produced beats for any rappers we’d know?
I haven’t really gotten into doing production for the record side of stuff, just for my own things, for my own friends through the years. I’ve had my own projects, also as I was saying before, I am a drummer, and I’ve played in bands with folks, and we’ve done shows, but more from behind the drum-kit. And I’ve also DJ’d more on the houseparty side of things. But that’s kind of where I focus my time as a DJ and a drummer. Producing wise, I love making beats, I’m not like a young kid, ya know, I’ve been around for a while. I don’t always know that I am in step with what everybody’s listening to, I know what I like, I like DJ Premier, I like Boom Bap, I like good hard-hitting hip-hop beats and I’m sure everybody gets to be that old dude at some point. I don’t pretend to be like, “I’m on all the newer shit.” I’m down to make beats, if people like what I make, and I’ll work with artists if it’s the right fit. For the most part I’ve just been doing my own things.

Do you like DJ Pauly D?
I enjoy that show, I love watching Jersey Shore, that’s good entertainment to me, I like the show. I’ve never been to a party he DJ’d, so I have no idea. To your question a second ago, I did work with Wyclef Jean a couple of years ago on a TV commercial some years back, I did a beat for him and he did a MasterCard commercial. I made the beat and produced that. I was the creative director for the Super Bowl commercial with Kevin Federline a couple of years ago, where he turns out to be working at a fast food restaurant. And a couple other things in the commercial world, through the years.

THANKS FAM!!! -$habooty 2k12

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