A couple of months ago a friend of mine showed me an animation project he was working on with the artist Reginald Jolley (aka Reggieknow) and it blew my mind. I have come to learn that Reggieknow was a seminal cat in the early Chicago hip-hop scene. Fast forward to 2008 - he's the Chief Creative Officer of the ad*itive (ad-itive.com), a multi-cultural advertising agency. Over the past 12 years he has headed campaigns for Sprite, McDonalds, Vitamin Water and Reebok to name a few. But his labour of love is Golden Age Hip-Hop and the "THISDAY" anime. Lodown gave me the opportunity to go down the rabbit hole with Reggieknow and his co-author Nowenen on "THIS DAY" to a world where everything is hip-hop...
- Q: Tell me about this world where everything is Hip-Hop?
A: NOWENEN: This Day's world pays the ultimate homage to golden era and early 90's Hip-Hop. This Day delves deeply into specific Hip-Hop nuances, both figuratively and literally. It's as though ones: job, family, friends, stores, food, etc., were all Hip-Hop.
REGGIEKNOW: ...so for example, in the script, instead of having the "Diamond District," we have the "Diamond D District." You wouldn't go to 7-Eleven to buy a carton of milk; you would go to 7-A3 to buy a carton of "Milk D," or a bag of "King Sun Chips."
- Q: I love the look of the film. What's the inspiration?
A: REGGIEKNOW: Thank you Sir. Here's the short list...the mighty Shirtkings, the graffiti artists Gnome, Slang, Doze (RSC,) and Mode2. The Bode comics (Cheech Wizard,). The anime influence on graffiti art, and of course Ralph Bakshi (Coonskin, Wizards.)
B: NOWENEN: It's like the Parliament Funkadelic album covers meet TRON, with the colors, backgrounds, situations, and even the characters. You could equally look at the This Day demo and the P-Funk album covers for hours, and continue to find something new, which you had missed before.
- Q: Seinfeld meets Yo! MTV Raps?
A: NOWENEN: Well Seinfeld, we know, is about everyday nothings in a big city, and Yo! MTV Raps was instrumental in golden era/90's hip-hop; so we took those two seemingly different worlds and married them...so what you have in This Day, is an urban perspective of a nothings foreground, accentuated by a golden era hip-hop background.
- Q: The fashion of the characters is very distinctive. Why are the brands so pronounced?
A: REGGIEKNOW: Well it's more about the details than the brands themselves, but it does pay homage to how hip-hop culture takes things like fashion and gives our touch, our flare, and then that culture presents those things, that fashion back to the world totally different from its origin, as well as, teasing the overboard brand consciousness too. It's "fashion avenue's" worst nightmare when the Cosby kids hit the catwalk during fashion week.
NOWENEN: That's just hip-hop!
- Q: I've heard about the Dem Dare flyers. What is Dem Dare?
A: REGGIEKNOW: Dem Dare was a collective from Go-Ill [Chicago] that grew into a community of hip-hoppers who shared the same taste in music, fashion, and knowledge of self. We used to throw parties for those who were like-minded, and we all embraced the 80's during the 90's. I drew the flyers in that same spirit... doorknockers, gold ropes, Nefertiti medallions, fila tennis, etc. The This Day characters are the Dem Dare flyers brought to life. The masses in Chicago, took a very late interest in hip-hop, so they didn't totally understand the Dem Dare movement. Most people found humor in our hair being locked, the food we didn't eat, the sagging jeans...I mean, they even accused us of dressing like we were caucasians because we wore Polo by Ralph Lauren...wow. Everywhere we went 85-ers would say, "Look at dem dare," meaning, "Look at them there," when referring to us, so we used the name to actually mock the "Chi-town" country folk.
It was all in fun. But for the record we're still Michigan Avenue's finest.
- Q: You've been doing your thing in the hip-hop culture for a while now. What was it like working on those Sprite campaigns in the 90's?
A: REGGIEKNOW: It was the beginning, because "urban marketing" didn't exist yet. Remember, everything was bubblegum advertising at the time, and there weren't things like "going on-line" in every household. That was the beginning of a hip hopper who lived the culture and put real hip-hop in advertising versus some ad guys that researched hip-hop in magazines. I'll skip that long speech and say, Sprite gave me chances to make 30 second hip-hop movies with some of the greats like, Bambaattaa, Large Pro, Nas, Flash, Lord Finesse, Shante, KRS, Kool Keith, etc. The Voltron, Five Deadly Women, and Wild Style '97 were some of my favorites. And it's still going...I'm CCO of the ad-itive (ad-itive.com) where I headed campaigns for 50 Cent's Vitamin Water, Pharrell's Ice Cream, Stevie Williams and DGK among others.
- Q: What was the point of the demo? The shit is dope but it ain't finished is it?
A: NOWENEN: It was important that we bridge the gap between script and concept. We needed to visually bring a portion of the script to life in the demo, in order to help get that push into a possible cable movie and/or DVD feature release.
B: REGGIEKNOW: The This Day demo gives us a chance to show people what we're talking about in the script, rather than having to explain it. It also allows us to present others with positive feedback from our audience.
- Q: What's in the future for the project?
A: REGGIEKNOW: We have some exciting things going on. Our official public screening will be held this summer with the great people of Zune/LA. The project has yet to be picked up but luckily we have fans of the project in the fashion and street wear industries, like yourself; who we are collaborating on projects with. Let's just say that things from this "world where everything is hip-hop" will be coming to life very soon.
- Q: What item from your world where everything is hip-hop would you love to have?
A: REGGIEKNOW: A K-Solo Speak 'N' Spellbound game.
NOWENEN: Juicy Juice Crew Drink Boxes.
Words: Chris Gibbs