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.
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.
