Sterling Pache and Koray Salilh of Romantic Child Studios recently finished shooting the music video for T-West’s “T Dot State of Mind” (Purchase on iTunes). The song reached the top of the charts on Flow 93.5, Toronto’s most popular urban radio station last year. The new video is sure to resurrect the track back to the top of the charts.
The song title “T Dot State of Mind” was inspired from the Nas song “N.Y. State of Mind”, which was in turn taken from the original Billy Joel song “New York State of Mind”. The Nas song rests as a classic hip hop anthem that an entire generation of hip hop enthusiasts can relate to.
It’s not uncommon for hip hop artists to praise the city of New York. Almost all east coast rap artists proclaim their love for their city in their songs. However, up until recently many Canadian artists have tried to identify with our Southern neighbours rather than celebrating our own cities. T-West has pushed the boundaries with this track by helping put Toronto on the map. There is a major hip hop movement that is ready to explode in Toronto. It’s about time artists like T-west helped push the gritty city of Toronto into the limelight.
When we were storyboarding for this music video we were we all on the same page in terms of the tone of the footage we were looking for. We used old Wu-Tang, Talib Kweli, Common, Nas and Mos Def videos as inspiration. Back in the 90’s there were an assortment of hip hop videos out of New York that really showcased the “feeling” of the city. The song “Respiration” by Blackstar is a great example of this type of video. Filled with imagery of pigeons fighting for survival in the city, clusters of cars racing through streetlights, scaffolding on city sidewalks from construction sites and the brick steps of homes in Brooklyn, the video gives you the feeling of New York without actually seeing anything overly identifiable about the city. Without feeling the need to show cliché skyline scenes, the empire state building or the Statue of Liberty, these artists exposed the soul of their city by doing “street videos” with handheld cameras. They filmed in subways, on lesser known streets, in parks and in underground walkways. The result is that people who live in New York City or have spent considerable time there get the feeling of being there without having to see the sign that reads “welcome to Manhattan: Population 13,000,000.
For those of us from Toronto who know and love the city, stock images of the Skydome or the CN tower simply don’t communicate the Toronto that most of us know. In fact no one particular icon, symbol or building represents Toronto. Instead the T-West video communicates Toronto through texture and atmosphere. There is a grittiness and a darkness to Toronto that we wanted to expose. Many of us who spend considerable time in Toronto are familiar with the dirty floors of the TTC, the green florescent lights in St George Subway station, the many underground tunnels the city has that we all flock to in order to stay off the streets in the wintertime, the looks of first generation immigrant grandparents on the Spadina streetcar and so on. That’s the Toronto we wanted to expose in this video. We didn’t want people to see the video and be like “oh ya that’s Jane and Finch” or “cool, that’s young street by my house”, but instead sit back and feel Toronto without having to recognize any particular place, store or city symbol.
The music Video’s storyline is not goal-centric. The song is simply about an average day in the city. Just as the previous two “New York State of Mind” songs were not epic goal oriented stories either. For must of us the day to day in Toronto is a series of trivial events and experiences. Toronto is the streetcar driver being rude when you ask where Runnymede station is, it’s running downstairs to catch your train on the Bloor line, it’s shaking off drunks in the club district when you’re walking around at night, it’s seeing homeless people in the cold trying to stay warm above subway grates, it’s about grabbing a chicken shawarma on your way home from the local Lebanese take out stand. It’s these series of events that make Toronto our home. For this reason, the beginning of the video starts out with T-west getting dressed and leaving for work late at night and then traveling throughout the city. The video includes an assortment of images from throughout the city and then it ends with T-West returning to his starting place. T-west simply acts as a character that pulls our cameras around to expose the soul of the city.
The Music Video will be released Jan 31st 2009. Until then you can watch the making of at the top of this post. You can also read Koray’s “making of” blog post here.
