Featured Artist – NYLE

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I recently posted Nyle’s video for “Let The Beat Build” and if you read the post you know how much I enjoyed the video!  I had to feature Nyle and get some background on how they pulled it off…and as expected..time, energy, planning, and talent.  If you missed the video, I highly recommend checking it out before reading any further!!  Here’s the inside scoop….

Nyle, I was turned on to your video “Let The Beat Build” by our A&R Scout Kiran and have probably watched it 50 times!  I sincerely love the creativity, passion, and what appears to be the unadulterated love of music and performance.  I gotta get into your head a bit and know what it took to make such an original piece.  So let’s dig in…

What’s so impressive is that both the video and audio is recorded simultaneously – LIVE!  How long did it take to plan and choreograph the shoot prior to hittin’ the studio and doing your first run-through?
Plan? Ha! The 32 of us were just sitting around one day and Chadd the director was like “Do guys want to make a music video, so we just did the whole thing that day.” Nah, actually the whole project from start to finish took around 3 months. Alot of it was just planning and booking equipment, the Director of Photography had to see the space and map out the lighting. We were assisted by 194 Recordings  (school run label) who coordinated all the people.

How many “practice runs” did everyone go through and how many takes before you hit the final take?”
A lot of music guys look at the “one-take” and take it to mean we did it in one try. One-take is a film term meaning one shot. Silly rappers. So it took us 6 practice takes in the morning, and throughout the day (it was a six hour shoot). Then we started rolling and it took us about 37 trys, we probably got through the entire video 20 times. Everyone was tired by the end of the day.

How many people were involved, total, to pull this off?
I don’t know, like 30? There were a little under twenty musicians, and around fifteen crew members.

From idea to completion, how long did the entire process take?
Hmm…from idea to completion? My homey Jo Bellino hit me up in early September with an idea to do a video using a band for Let the Beat Build. We never got it up off the ground and after a while I thought to do it myself, adding the one-take, live recorded aspect. So we actually shot the video on March 8th. That’s one, two… What comes after January? Oh, yeah. Seven months. Yup. I think…

Give me an idea of the creative evolution….Did you write the song first and build the performance around it or did you and the director build this idea, collectively, from the ground up?
Lil Wayne came to me in a dream. In it I was sleeping and he came floating down for the ceiling and said in a ghastly voice “Ehhhh, shawty. Wobbly Wobby drop drop it like its hot.” And as soon as he said that I woke up in a cold sweat, and I knew what to do.

You mention in your lyrics that the setting is where you go to school, what were some of the advantages in pulling this off because you were a student?
Ha! Advantages, how about blocking out an expensive as studio for 16 hours for free. That would be one. The biggest would be apply for the grant that allowed us to do the whole damn thing! I applied for a grant in December and we got 2k to do the video.

What was your goal when first setting out to pull this off and did you reach it?
I never got my vocals to the point I wanted. I feel like that was really shakey, trying to balance the performance and choreography and get the lyrics straight. In the end I definitely feel satisfied with the video, I think that Chadd Harbold’s direction, Adam Newport-Berra’s vision, and the whole crew did an amazing job getting everything to bring my vision to life.

What’s next for Nyle?!
My next project, the Capstone EP will be released on the 27th, we will be having a release show at The Bowery Poetry Club on that date.

Any thoughts to share with fellow indie artists?
Yeah, before my homies at Springshot posted the video to Nahright, I thought that blogs were alot more exclusive than they actually are. Don’t get me wrong, you need a foot in, but after that its all about content. Content is king.

Check Nyle out at NyleRaps.com