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You Just Got Smacked!
By Odienne “Bigg O” Chisolm On
November 8, 2002, two complete strangers got
together and smacked the streets up! Bronx-native,
Craig Davis and Queens-native Smack united
Streets, Music, Arts, Culture and Knowledge
to create SMACK DVDs.
SMACK DVDs have turned out to be the hottest
commodities on the streets - - whether you
bought them or borrowed them - - at the end
of the day you liked them! Craig Davis and
Smack along with their publicist, Shonte Armstrong,
are the creative forces behind that all too
real footage we see on SMACK DVDs. Mainstream
show’s like Access Hollywood and Access
Granted all give us behind the scene peeks
at artists, but there’s no denying that
nobody reveals those “behind the scene” scenes
like SMACK. SMACK DVDs show us our favorite
artists in their most authentic and greasiest
form…. Street! No FCC censors and violations
to worry about, SMACK allows artists to be
real and just let it all hang out. “We
try to chill with the artists the way a fan
would want to chill with the artists,” Craig
explains. |
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With Craig Davis
being more of the college school boy type and Smack
being the more rugged street dude, they argued
a lot in the beginning about their concept and
direction, but after a while they just put differences
aside and just did it- and as Craig puts it, “we’ve
been doing it ever since.” These men have
been going full speed covering artists like Juelz
Santana, Beanie Siegel, 50, TI, Exhibit, Game,
David Banner, Fat Joe, Camron, Jim Jones, Peter
Gunz, Lil Flip, the list is never-ending. The Juelz
Santana cover was their first issue and it got
madd love, but the issue that really made their
street credibility even stronger, was issue #2
with that birthday boy 50 Cent. Smack said that
issue “made us real credible because of the
raw and explicit footage we had.” Hip-hop
documentary style DVDs have been done prior to
SMACK DVDs arriving on the scene, |
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but
there’s
something unique about SMACK that draws you in. “We
structure differently from others. I mean we two
dudes that came up on the streets- that’s
where I’m from and that’s what I know,
so I know what the average street dude wants to
see, smell me? We give the consumer their money’s
worth and we go at this hard,” Smack says. |
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While most people
never reach the finish line, Craig and Smack are
living out their dreams, but everything has its
ups and downs… “The best thing about
this job is that I can relate to it. The worse
thing is getting up and doing everything your f*cking
self. I wouldn’t change it though. We basically
are at our own pace; we’re our own bosses,
we young black entrepreneurs trying to come up.
Everything is done in house, from the camera work,
shooting people state to state, to editing, etc.
We get out what we put in.” While Craig definitely
agrees with Smack, he adds, “it feels good
proving to people that we could do it. There were
so many people saying you can’t do your own
distribution, you can’t do this or do that.
So it’s good to show that we set goals and
accomplished them.”
Smack welcomes the non-believers and he’s
not mad about any previous or current negativity. “There
are so many talkers and bullsh*tters out there.
People saying I’m gonna do this, I’m
gonna do that and they don’t do sh*t, so
you gotta make people believers.” SMACK
DVDs have mos def made believers out of the streets
by bringing us the artists we feel on a daily
basis and letting us inside their world for an
hour or two. It doesn’t end here for
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Craig and Smack
as they plan on doing it hard with their next set
of goals, production companies and film. They proved
they could get things done in the past, so their
future is looking pretty damn good; let the streets
tell it!
Oh, one more thing, for all of you wanna-be rappers,
who think you can just try to get on a SMACK DVD
by just emailing them (website www.smackdvdmagazine.com)
WRONG! They want people who have created their
own buzz, “we not just gonna give you a free
ride and create buzz for you, nobody got us here
for free. We were out there hanging up posters,
handing out flyers and DVDs. We want [dudes] who
are out there grinding.” With that being
said- GET YOUR WEIGHT UP!!!!
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| Copyright © 2003-2006, FashionLedge.com. All Rights Reserved |
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