Rapsody
12 Problems Music Video
Grammy-nominated Rapsody is an American rapper from Snow Hill, NC. Rapsody has worked with the likes of J. Cole, Stevie Wonder, Kendrick Lamar, Busta Rhymes, John Legend, as well as several others.
Making a Statement and Doing it Justice
Rapsody came to us to shoot a music video for her latest track – “12 Problems.” This powerful song talks about police brutality, social injustice, the war on drugs, and other issues, so we wanted to make sure we captured Rapsody’s passion and brought her message to life in the right way.
The first time we heard the song, ideas started flowing immediately. When Rapsody came to the office a few days later, we spent a couple of hours discussing her initial concept and building on it from there. By the end, everyone was extremely happy with the idea and we couldn’t wait to get started.
THE SETUP
We scouted nearly 10 locations on the road to putting this shoot together. It took roughly three weeks to find the perfect places to shoot, assemble the crew, develop shot lists, and schedule everyone needed to pull off this ambitious shoot.
THE SHOOT
Over two full days of filming, we captured everything you see in the music video, and quite a bit of other footage that didn’t make the final edit. A majority of our filming took place at St. Augustine University in Raleigh, NC. Because this location gave us so many backdrops for filming, it afforded us the luxury of setting up a home base at the Alumni House on campus. This base served as our main point of organization, and really helped maintain social distancing for the 12-person crew and over 20 extras.
THE EDIT
It was important to us, as well as Rapsody, that the video was released before the election. This gave us a little less than a week to deliver the final product. Our first edit took roughly 12 hours before sitting down to make final edits with Rapsody by our side. In the end, the video premiered smackdab in the middle of Times Square
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