In an era when musicians often brag about the huge amount of money they spend on music videos just to elevate their status, rapper M.anifest has said he spent less than $200 to produce the clip for his short film.
The former Rapper of the Year award winner told Paley Martin of TIDAL that the film was shot in a fish market and that the environment was “tough” such that “when you enter it, the smell could knock you out, and we had this ambitious project to do this there.”
He added that Producer and stylist Afro District came up with the idea of an African ballerina in a tough environment.
He said:
That one shot was either going to be brilliant or terrible in that environment we did it in.It was a fish market, and that environment is tough.
When you enter it, the smell could knock you out, and we had this ambitious project to do this there. And we had a very short time window because before people fully recognized me and got distracted by it.’
We did not play the music while filming and we had it pre-planned but we had a lot of spontaneity about it, and we managed to pull off this one shot thing that had so much meaning but a lot of spontaneity as well.
It was an ambitious project that we needed luck for, and we got lucky. [Laughs] Everything happened in just a couple days.
We woke up at 4 a.m., I picked the dancer up myself. We ended up maybe spending the equivalent of less than $200. It was a passion project for everybody involved.
Watch below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9JCCZSIozk]
