Last
week the boss passed something along to me that he thought I’d find “pretty
interesting.” He was right. Draze aka
The Prince of Thieves is a young NY
emcee, and has cooked something up that may not be revolutionary, but is still
pretty dope. He’s created mixtapemovies (.com), which are basically
mash-ups of his rhymes, industry players and…yeah, movies. For example, his
debut connected the story of Rocafella‘s
rise and fall – connecting Hov and Dame with the classic comedy Trading Places, starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd. Do the math in your head and you should understand the
hilarity. It was a well-received piece considering how crap-flooded the mixtape
and video scene is these days.
For
his next “movie,” Draze reworks the G-Unit empire and your favorite
rapper’s favorite movie, Scarface.
The cast of characters is pretty ingenious. Loyd Banks plays Manny (the
sidekick everyone knows could take over if he could stay focused) and Jam Master Jay is Omar Suarez (the connection that got everything started). Dude even
throws in Vivica A. Fox, Jimmy Iovine and Dre as Elvira, Alejandro Sosa, and Frank Lopez just to show how deep he
wanted this installment to be. Oh, and in case you’re retarded, 50 Cent plays Tony Montana.
The
premise of the nine-minute short is simple: a young gangster hungry for riches
fights his way to the top of the industry any way he can, only to get too out
of control and have his kingdom fall apart. Now, Draze is by no means trying to diss Mr. Jackson; he’s just putting the story together (of course, the
dominance of G-Unit‘s future does
seem to hot-topic these days). As the track and the video does play out as a
movie, I’ll pass spoiling the storyline in detail.
To
go more into what Draze plans to do,
check out mixtapemovies.com. In
talking to him, it appears as though he has plans for a bunch of these to be
released over the Internet one at a time. He then plans to come out with a DVD
packaging all of them together.
AD LOADING...
As
I have said before, mixtapemovies.com
isn’t likely the type of thing that will turn the industry on its ears,
particularly because the concept actually takes talent and isn’t easily
imitated. It is certainly a good way to get your name out there in this
incredibly over-saturated marketplace. As a song, these bump, and his rhymes
are on point. As a video, they’re a little low-budget and a lot amateurish, but
in the end it’s pretty damn creative. I’ve watched Draze‘s Scarface maybe 5
times straight while writing this (and a handful of times throughout the week)
and have had a good time doing it. The same 30 minutes and change of the video
for “Shorty Like Mine” and my brains would be splattered all over my monitor
right about now.
