DGainz Tells All: The Stories Behind His Best Music Videos

Chicago's hip-hop scene gained national attention this year, but it wasn't just about the music. Since 2011, video director Duan Gaines has been showing the world a side of Chicago that was previously invisible.

The 24-year-old grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes housing projects, and has managed to build a career from the bottom up. After his basement flooded, a FEMA check helped pay for a video camera, and since then he's been shooting videos for the bulk of artists in Chicago's drill scene. His eye for talent and awareness of his audience helped drive his success. As a result, his videos have racked up millions of views, minting local stars before the media was even aware of them.

Although he's not classically trained, and it's easy to see DGainz's evolution as a videographer over the course of the past year. His style has become refined and distinctive. He's also produced a few of the scene's signature anthems ("Money Dance," "Go In"). With a tireless work ethic (his YouTube channel has 225 self-directed videos), he's inspired many others to shoot their own videos and helped create a space online for artists who previously were cut off from the music industry.

After the runaway success of one of his latest videos, Chief Keef's "Love Sosa," we spoke with DGainz about the 25 most significant videos he's ever shot.

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Uploaded: October 18, 2009

Mixtape: N/A

DGainz: "‘I Be Silly,’ with that one I had already did three other videos before with Lil Kenny, before that one. I wanted to do a new video for him, so I went in the studio, I made a beat and I just came up with the hook (“I, I, I be silly”) and then I wrote the verses to it. Halloween was coming up, after I made the song. He just happened to have the Halloween costume that he had on [in the video], the skeleton.

“We shot the video in the studio. Had a black screen set up with a white wall on the other side. I shot the video with a Kodak camera, I remember it was a small green Kodak camera.

“[Lil Kenny]is my cousin, I think he was eight when we shot that video. [I was] basically playing off of his personality. In the video he was dancing, so just show how entertaining he is without even really trying. I played off of the hook, and the skeleton outfit was really a plus. He just so happened to have it, and I’m like this fits right here to it. So I just played it off like a fun video, something that kids and, I think, adults would love.”

Uploaded: March 5, 2011

Mixtape: I'm A Hitta

DGainz: “I met Durk in 2009. a guy that I was working with by the name of Boojie, he brought Durk over to my house to produce his song and they ended up spending the night because it was so late. And we just recorded it. Durk ended up sleeping in the studio on the floor. [Laughs.]

“I didn’t know Durk, but I got like a bad vibe from him because he was quiet, so I thought he was like on some sneaky stuff. Then he was trying to talk to my sister so I definitely didn’t like him after that [laughs]. But from that day I recorded with him once after, ‘cause he knew my younger uncle, they went to the same school, Robeson [High School]. And after that I didn’t see him again until like a year later at a party. He was like, ‘Man, I want to work with you.’ He ended up hitting me up on Facebook, and we ended up doing the ‘Sneak Dissin’’ video in January of 2011. And it had good feedback that I wasn’t getting on videos at first. I thought, oh, I got something here.

“He’s got like a harmony to his voice. I like the Durk songs when he’s not more so rapping but he’s kind of singing. He’s sing-rapping in his own style though. And he’s got this light voice. What he’s talking about really doesn’t match his voice, but that’s what makes him different.

“I started recording for Durk, and like the day we shot the ‘Sneak Dissin’’ video I let him hear the ‘I’m A Hitta’ beat when I was playing all my beats on my iPod, he kept going back to it like, ‘I want this one.’ But that beat, I had already promised somebody the beat. I told them, ‘Durk wants this, is that cool if I give it to him?’ They said, ‘Go ahead.’

“So then I took all my studio equipment over to Durk’s house and we recorded the song. I don’t think we finished it the first day, so I went back over there and we finished the song [a second day]. When we were playing the song everybody was coming in and going crazy. Like, ‘Damn, that shit is a hit.’ So then I wanted to do like a little preview video to it just to let people hear a preview of the song. So we shot like a two-minute quick video, with just three scenes. And we just blew up. When I put it out everybody was just going crazy.

“I actually had shot two videos that day. I went to my guy Billionaire Black’s crib and I recorded a song for him and shot the video, then I left his house and went to Durk’s and shot the video. And I put them both out the next day.

“By that time I had my first camera, that was the Canon T1a.”

Uploaded: June 20, 2011

Mixtape: Hardbody The Mixtape

DGainz: "I was actually shooting a video earlier that day and Louie hit me up out the blue like, ‘Man, it’s Dro Day [a day celebrating the life of a murdered East Side resident], it's crackin’ out here, I want you to shoot the video.’ I was wrapping up the shoot I was at like, 'I’m finna go shoot another video.' Louie picked me up, I went out there and I was paranoid at first ‘cause it was dark outside and there was hella people, I didn’t really know the neighborhood like that. I used to live around there when I was younger, but I'm older, and I was hearing their people were into it [with another neighborhood].

“So I was kind of paranoid, but my cousin ended up being out there and Louie was like, ‘Man, just film everything, just film everything.’ My cousin ended up making me comfortable ‘cause he knew the people, he was just walking around with me like, ‘Yeah film her, film him, film him.’ So then Louie was like, ‘Aight, let’s do a couple performance things.’

“After I recorded it he was like, ‘Can you make this look like Paid In Full, when they was all outside getting it cracking?’ I was like, yeah, I can try to get that look. And that’s how I tried to do it.

“[When I found out Louie wanted to work with me] I was excited, because I heard about him through some people when I was in Indiana. They showed me the ‘I’m Arrogant’ video. After I seen that, I went home and I did a little research and ended up downloading two of his mixtapes. I was vibing to it and then I came across ‘Kush Too Strong.’ That’s one of my favorite Louie tracks to this day.

“I like how Louie do like a slur, it almost sounds like he’s lazy when he’s rapping but it’s appealing. There’s a slur to the way he’s rapping, and it flows with the beat. That really caught my attention.

“His guy Bobby Drake hit me up on Facebook, and Louie called me the next day. [I think they heard about me] because of Lil Durk's ‘I’m a Hitta,’ but he didn’t even know I produced it until the day I was shooting the video. In the first video I shot for Louie you can see them watching ‘I’m A Hitta’ in it. Louie hadn’t seen my other videos, he really didn’t know that much about me. When I told him I made the beat, he was like, ‘For real?’

“A lot of people like afterward was saying, ‘Man, I started tuning into you after this video.’ I think that was my first video where a lot was going on, and I was used to putting out a lot of simple stuff. There was a lot going on in the video, so I think that caught people’s attention. And I put a lot of faces in the video, so everybody in the video was showing somebody, so that video really showcased my work and my skills.”

Uploaded: July 11, 2011

Mixtape: N/A

DGainz: “I did a photoshoot for this female group called Pink Nation, and I put it on Facebook, and then all the little girl groups from the Low End hit me up like, ‘We want to work with you, we want to work with you.' All hitting me in the inbox, 'We want a photoshoot too.’ So I had did like a little competition, the Swag Awards, for the girls to compete against each other, dancing and all types of stuff.

“Pretty In Pink made a video shouting me out like, ‘We mess with your work, we really want to work with you,’ to do beats and all that. So I ended up giving them my number and they called me. I told them that was love, people weren’t really showing me that type of love at first. So I made the ‘Go In’ beat and it was like three of four of them that was gonna be on the song, and I was gonna put the [rap group] Buck 20 Brick Boys on the song with them. That’s why the beat is so long. I sent the beat to them and they all wrote their little verses, but when we booked the studio time, none of them would show up.

“It was like two weeks that passed, and I was gonna give the beat away and everything, but Shady called me like, ‘They all playing, I’m gonna just come on my own. They don’t want to come, they’re all making excuses.’ She came all the way to my house on the bus just to do it--I lived all the way west--and that to me showed she wanted to do it. So she came and had a little verse, we recorded it and then I put out a little snippet video. And then the summer came, and I did a real video shoot for the song. We went to a little park on 39th and Cottage Grove. We shot the video and I put it up like the next day and it just went from there.

"That’s like my biggest beat to this day, and I don’t even like it [laughs]. That’s the crazy part about it. But yeah, I got mixed feedback from a lot of people. There’s been some negative feedback surrounding the song, but it’s just playing around. It wasn’t meant to be nothing negative. But people in the low end, they understood it and accept it, because that’s how a lot of kids and a lot of people talk where I’m from. But outside people are like, ‘What the hell? Eat the team? What type of shit are they into?’ I don’t really think they want anybody to eat the team though.

“I'd done videos before where people pulled out guns. But I think somebody out there had a pistol like, ‘Who want to hold a gun?’ Everybody's like, ‘Me, me!’ And they were out there fighting over the gun. It wasn’t just Katie holding a gun but that’s the only person that I put in there with it. It was kind of funny to me. I didn’t look at like I was trying to promote violence, it was just funny how she was dancing with the gun. She was swagging with it, that’s how I’ll put it. I wasn’t trying to promote guns and all that. She was swagging with the little pistol.”

Uploaded: August 5, 2011

Mixtape: Bang

DGainz: “Originally [Keef] was hitting me up on Facebook. I didn’t know who he was, and around that time it’s when a lot of people were hitting me up. It was summer, I had hella people hitting me up for videos. I just looked at him as another person who was trying to hit me up.

“I had seen a video of him and Lil Reese called ‘In This Bitch’ and I ended up liking the song. The song was stuck in my head, and I thought Lil Reese made the hook, that’s what caught my attention. [raps along] 'I'm the maaan in this bitch.' So I found out that Keef made the hook. So I’m like, he’s decent, but I still didn’t hop on it.

“[Keef] kept hitting me up and I ended up going to Ken’s studio with Lil Durk and he was there. And how he approached me, he was humble. I liked the way he approached me, like, ‘I want to work with you.’ I had my camera with me and I showed him the quality of the camera. He appreciated it, he was like, ‘Man, SD, come look at this camera.’

“So we ended up scheduling to shoot the video the next week and I remember hitting him up before I was getting ready for the shoot, putting on my clothes or whatever. I text him to come pick me up, and he text me back, ‘I’m young’n, I can’t get you.’ I was like, how old are you? I thought he was 18 or 19. So then I ended up having to catch the bus to go shoot the video.

“When I was shooting the video I remember it was super hot. I actually was shooting a video for Sasha the same day but the video shoot didn’t go right, so I just went and shot Keef’s, since her video didn’t come out right. So I shot Keef’s and put up a preview the next day. I had seen the reaction I was getting from the preview. I remember being in the house editing the video and my whole house was singing the song. [Raps] 'Bangbangbang, bang!' I put it out, and it got like-- I didn't expect that, it started doing numbers I didn't even expect on my page.

"The biggest [video] before Keef was probably ‘I’m A Hitta,’ or the ‘Go In [remix]’ from Louie. But then Keef just ended up taking over everything, it ended up having around 400,000 views by the end of last year, with no money behind it, he didn't have a manager. It was just a video. It wasn't even viral.

"[Keef] originally wanted it to look like Fat Trel’s ‘Respect With The Tech,’ and I didn’t really like taking other peoples’ ideas. If I did a video, I wanted it to look like my video. And I kept in mind what he said, but I want this to look like what I want this to look like, what I feel. So that’s why I did the video the way I did.

“[I was trying to] just really fit the song, I hadn’t heard the song until the day of the shoot. when I was coming in he played the song for me in the studio. I really didn’t know what I was going for. As I was shooting, I was just shooting. When I got home I was watching the footage, and I really tried to make the filters and the color really match the video of the song. I felt like the video reminded of me of those African movies or like Haiti with the wild kids with AK’s. It just had that type of feel to it, like a raw uncut type of vibe.”

Uploaded: August 13, 2011

Mixtape: Hardbody The Mixtape

DGainz: “The beat was originally for my brothers, The Buck 20 Brick Boys. I was recording the song in December when we had that big storm in Chicago, the blizzard. I recorded and made the beat in the studio. We made a song, but the song was never finished and they wasn’t planning on finishing it. It was just a spare beat sitting around.

“So [Louie] asked me for some beats, I sent him a group of beats. He called me and was like, ‘Man, I got the beats you sent me, but this particular beat is the one right here. I like this one.’ He rapped his verse and said it was some army shit. ‘I don’t know what the beat called, but it’s like some army shit.’ I said, is it called, I think the name of the beat was called ‘Money Walk.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, that one.’ So that’s how that came about.

“When I was shooting ‘Gumbo Mobsters,’ that’s the first time I actually heard the song. He played it for me and I was like, damn, this shit nice. I think that was the beginning of the summer when we shot the ‘Gumbo Mobsters’ video. We shot the video for ‘Money Dance’ at the end of summer. I remember him hitting me up like, ‘Yeah, let’s shoot something today.’ I think we was supposed to shoot something else but we ended up just shooting ‘Money Dance.’

“We went on the East end and he was telling me on the way to the shoot, ‘Man, this block we finna go at be cracking on the regular every day.’ There was so many people and we just started filming, and the police ended up shutting the video shoot down. We would have had way more footage in the actual video, but the police shut it down. He was like, ‘Let’s go back and shoot some more scenes.’ I told him it ain’t going to be the same energy. So I took what I had and made it into a video. I actually low key kind of don’t like the video because I felt like it could have been better but everybody else loves it so, hey.

“I tried to played off of the ‘money’ title, the money dance, that’s why I put a green filter on it. I did it more choppy, with the beat. And it’s always fun to edit something I produced because I know all the sounds and I can play more with the visual and the sound. I tried to do different angles and stuff than with ‘Gumbo Mobsters’ and the overall color made it look different. Even if the shots were similar.

"It wasn’t like [Lil Mouse] was trying to capitalize off it, he just happened to say it in a song. I really think it's moreso you should look to Louie and them, they should have pushed this record. I don’t think Lil Mouse was trying to steal it or nothing like that. Everybody be talking about the money dance, you see Tink doing it in her video, Buck 20 doing it...it’s a popular dance in Chicago.”

“I used to make beats and use awkward sounds, like using sounds wouldn’t nobody else think to mess with. Like, who would use the sound of somebody saying ‘Whoop?’ And when I did that, they were going crazy in the studio ‘cause at first the beat was coming out bogus. I remember somebody was behind me saying, ‘Damn man, you fucking the beat up.’ I was like, 'What? Let me show you something.' I clicked it right quick, had to shut him up.”

Uploaded: August 24, 2011

Mixtape: The Motion Picture

DGainz: “It’s so crazy. The day we were shooting ‘Money Dance,’ we were riding downtown and I had my laptop with me. He was trying to go get him some shirts, the gray polo shirt he had on in the video. I played my song in the car because he didn’t know I rapped and all that. He was like, ‘Damn, you beasting.’ I told him, check this out, and I played him the Shady ‘Go In.’ He was in the car wildin’ like, ‘Damn, this shit is crazy. Let me get a verse on there.’ I said cool, I’ll send you the beat and go ahead and do what you do. He was like, ‘I want you to come to the studio session with me.’

“I went to the studio session, and I ended up recording the whole studio session and he was like, ‘Can you turn the ‘Go In’ into a video?’ I was like yeah, I’ll see what I can do with it. I dropped the ‘Go In (Remix)’ and ‘Louie Montana’ video in the same day, and I had dropped the ‘Money Dance’ the week before. So I had dropped three videos in two weeks.

“A lot of people liked it because of how he flipped the female song and made it into his own, he did hella bars on it, and a lot of people wasn’t doing that.”

“When I made the beat originally--I always wanted to use the Don’t Be A Menace sample when I watched the movie. I thought it would be creative to put it in a beat, and I ain’t heard of nobody using it. So when I made the beat and I was just listening to it, I thought man, this would be the perfect beat to put that sample in. I downloaded a scene from the movie, took the audio out and formatted it into the beat. And that’s what caught people’s attention. I put my voice into it too, that’s actually my voice saying ‘Go In.’”

Uploaded: August 28, 2011

Mixtape: Beauty and the Beast

DGainz: “Meek was one of the other people hitting me up on Facebook. She had like professional pictures, I don’t think I thought she was like famous but at that point, that’s when I had a lot of equipment and I thought she was like really out of my league. And she's hitting me up? It look like she already got her shit together. I thought she already had like a big buzz, I didn’t do any research on her. I was kind of distant, kind of intimidated I wanted to say.

“I remember she continued hitting me up on Facebook and I had seen that Zae shot a video for her. I ain’t gonna lie, what made me look at the video, she had a bra on. I’m like who is this? [Laughs] I clicked on it and I was like damn, then the music caught my attention. The song was called ‘Rockabye Baby.’ I hit her up after she hit me up like, we can do something. She hit me and was like, ‘Check out my mixtape and pick a song.’ I went through her mixtape and was bumping ‘Smoker’s Delight,’ it caught my attention because it was some spoken word type shit. The way she was explaining her love for weed I really never heard before.

“I remember she had already shot a video for the song, she shot it herself but it really wasn’t all that type of visual. She said we can reshoot it if I wanted to. When we shot the video it was my first time ever meeting her. We shot it, and I just liked her vibe. Her vibe was so natural. Like when the camera come off, she is the same person on camera when she is off camera. Her vibe was just so chill, she was cool, calm and collected. Funny. That’s why she is one of my favorite people to work with, because she’s real and she’s trying not to be someone she’s not.”

Uploaded: October 2, 2011

Mixtape: The Motion Picture

DGainz: “I remember [Louie] hitting me like, ‘Man, let’s shoot something today.’ They picked me up in the van, and he was telling me about how he wanted to shoot it. I was like 'What ideas you got for it?' I hadn’t even heard the song. He said, ‘I just want to shoot the video [of] us riding around in the van smoking.’ I’m like, '...okay.' [laughs]. So when they flamed up a blunt, I just started filming. We went to the mall, they usually like going shopping and stuff, and I just filmed it. Then we ended up meeting up with some girls and he was like, ‘Let’s go go-kart racing.’ So we went go-kart racing [laughs]. That was basically what the video was. They was just smoking and getting high, and it fit the song perfectly.

“I didn’t get in [a go-kart]. I’m not a good driver [laughs].

“I don’t think nothing else happened. I remember all the girls that was with us were driving a jeep. And I guess somebody had broken the back window of the jeep, so--we was behind them and they was driving in front of us. And Louie was like, ‘Film the jeep. They don’t have no back window. El back window nooo!’ [laughs].”

Uploaded: October 30, 2011

Mixtape: Shoot or Get Shot, Vol. 2

DGainz: “I met Vic around the same time I met Durk, in early 2009. That was when one of my guys brought Vic over, when I was living on 95th. So he was just freestyling, just rapping for me. And I kind of felt awkward, like he was trying to prove a point to me, because I ain’t nobody! But he just freestyled for me and then he came back over the next day, like just showed up at my house. I was like, I don’t know you dude [laughs].

“But I admired his ambition, so I ended up recording a song for him. And then from that day, he just kept coming over and we recorded a lot of music together. With that video, the song was a few months old, and I remember him hitting me up like, ‘I want to do a video, let’s go out and grab something to eat.’ The basic idea of the video is 'do what we want to.' Like they were racing their cars on regular streets. So we went to grab some breakfast and they was just wildin’ and eating. And when I watched the footage I kind of looked at it like the old Grease movie, where they were going wild with a leather jackets. That’s the kind of feel I wanted, like an old school Grease-type feel.

“I used FL Studios to make the beat. I actually don’t even remember making the beat because it was so long ago. I made the beat probably in 2010. We shot the video in 2011. But I remember when I was recording it, I was making the beat, and if you listen to it you can hear my voice in it. (Mimics sound used) I made my voice high-pitched with auto-tune on it, just doing something creative with the beat. [I was inspired by] Timbaland. His style in general. I kind of was going for the feel that he had for Lloyd Banks ‘I’m So Fly.’”

Uploaded: November 28, 2011

Mixtape: More Than Music

DGainz: “Oh yeah, that video was crazy. We actually shot that video twice. The first day we shot it, I think we shot the video in November, 2011. I remember the first day we shot it, we ended up shooting it at nighttime. I was using a Canon 7D, it was my first time using it, and I didn’t know what I was doing with it, so the quality of the video came out real shitty. When I was shooting it we shot a scene in a hallway and I remember hella, hella people pulling out guns and I’m like, God damn! I can’t put that shit in no video!

"The only fear I had is if one of them guns going off. Like when we were shooting in the hallway the first time we shot the video, I had the tripod. And they was pointing so many guns at me I just set the camera on the tripod and walked away from the camera, like, man! Y’all are about to shoot me up in here.”

“I told Keef, when we left the video, I wanted to re-shoot it. I told him I didn’t like how it turned out, so we shot it a week later in the daytime and I just came up with the concept. I called him like, I want to do it like a movie, like in the beginning. I told him the idea and he said, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.’

“He actually did pretty good on the acting, him and Tadoe. It was hilarious when we was doing it, but it came out good. We just rolled around, we was in the Englewood area when we shot it. We shot the first part of the video in his house and then we went to the Englewood area and shot the rest of it. It wasn’t anybody out there when we pulled up. It was just me, him and his manager Dro. There wasn’t too many people out there, and I just remember turning around and hella people came out there all of a sudden, trying to get in the video.

"The little kids, that shit with the little kids was amazing. I ain’t been around no little bad kids in a while, and I was just looking at the shit the kids was doing. Again, people saying I’m trying to promote [violence or] whatever, I was basically showing people what I see. It’s real. I was seeing the little kids singing and knew the words to the song. They brought a gun, I was like, what the hell? It was crazy to me, and it was like, I wanted people to see what I was seeing. So that’s why I put that in the video. But the video turned out decent and I put the video out like a couple weeks later and Keef ended up getting locked up the same week I dropped the video, that’s when he caught that case.

“When I seen [the WorldStar video with Keef's young fan, which first drew attention to Keef nationally], I thought [Keef] probably knew the kid at first. And then I saw people posting it on Facebook like, ‘Shorty tripping.’ When I watched the video the first thing that came to my head was, damn, he got real fans. Like it tweaked me out. His shit was on Worldstar! To see Keef’s name on Worldstar, I just knew, man something, was finna happen."

Uploaded: December 28, 2011

Mixtape: Swagg Season

DGainz: “With that video, we shot it on two different days. The first day we shot it at one of his guy’s cribs, with the bedroom scene. I used a fisheye lens and we filmed it. I loved the vibe of the song and the beat was so clean. After we shot the first scene we ended up going downtown, and it was December so we had leather jackets--it was freezing. I’m talking unbearable cold. It was so cold when we was shooting.

“We ended up scheduling it for the next morning, and we shot some more scenes. We shot most of it in the Hyde Park area. We went to a pizza place, we shot something in a cigar store, we shot one scene in front of Giordano’s. The vibe of how the video turned out flowed perfectly. It couldn’t have come out any better. Even the quality didn’t have the best quality, but I felt the dull look of the quality fit right with the vibe of the song. It came out perfectly, that’s why it’s one of my favorite videos.

"With the fisheye lens, I was really trying to go with the Hype Williams feel. He’s known for using the fisheye, so when I was in the editing process I was going for a Hype Williams feel, that’s one of my biggest inspirations.

“I originally met him--where they hang out over East is where my aunt stays. And he was friends with my cousin, and I was just over there one day. My cousins had showed him and all his guys my videos and everything. I remember coming to my cousins’ house and him and some of his guys were up there, and I ain’t know them. When I looked at him, he was like ‘Hey man you look familiar.’ I’m like, ‘what, you seen me on YouTube?’ ‘Yeah.’ They were like, ‘That’s my cousin. You need to mess with Mille, Mille got bars.’ I’m like, who’s Mille? And he was just looking at me.

“I remember adding him on my Facebook. So I did like a contest on Facebook to do a free video. I was like, everybody send me some music, whoever has the best song, I’ll do a video for them. I remember putting it up there and he kept commenting like, ‘I won, I know I won.’ I listened to his song and at first I didn’t like it. It was ‘Catch Me Swagging.’ I remember listening to it, thinking ‘this is aight.’ But then the song was stuck in my head, it was one of them songs where you walk away from the radio but it just keeps playing in your head and you want to listen to it again. I thought that was cool, I was like, I actually like this shit.

“So I put it on Facebook, ‘the winner is Chris Mille.’ And then we went and shot that video. It was cold, we shot it early in the morning. I remember being cold that morning. It was a quick video, an hour long at the most, probably 45 minutes when we shot it. I put it up the same day we shot the video, I put it up that afternoon.

“He got kind of a slow flow, like a 2 Chainz punch line, like the kind of funny, and it make sense in his own way. I don’t know, it’s just something different. And he has a good beat selection, he know how to pick beats and instrumentals.”

Uploaded: December 30, 2011

Mixtape: N/A

DGainz: “I always wanted to shoot a video in the El Station. I was always like, man, it would be dope to shoot something in an El car. I remember watching New York videos of breakdancing on the trains. And seeing Step Up, seeing them breakdance on trains. I was like, man I’d love to show off our El, do something like that.

“So when I they originally recorded the song, I had no ideas what to do with it. It was one of those songs where you just kind of have to go off a random idea, like you can do anything with the song because it’s not a particular subject. So I remember telling them I wanted to shoot at the El Station.

“We all met up at the studio, and we all got on the train on the Green Line and we just started shooting. Then I’m like, ‘let’s go to the Blue Line, there are a lot of weird people down there.’ I know there be people down there playing piano and all types of stuff, and I remember this lady down there with blue hair playing a trumpet or some shit. When we was shooting, she got up and was like, ‘Can I get in this video?’ We said yeah, and she got to dance. That made the night, seeing her, that was hilarious. We had fun overall, going from the Blue Line and going to the Red Line and riding all the way to 95th. I remember people filming us on their cell phones. It was fun, there wasn’t no immaturity, nobody was fighting, arguing, nothing. It was just a fun video.

“[My brother] Choppa, I actually met him in 2009, like I met him after Vic Mone in the summer, ‘cause I had just started talking to my father when I was 20, and [Choppa] was locked up when I started talking to my father. He got out, and him and my other brother F Dot was into the same stuff, like rapping. So we started a little movement [Buck 20 Brick Boys] in Chicago, we was shooting videos and dropping them like back-to-back. That’s what caught Durk’s attention. He was like, ‘you and your brothers doing your thing.’

“Even with Keef. Keef was rocking with us and hit me up like, ‘Man, fuck with me. You messing with Buck 20 [Brick Boys], I want you to produce for me and do all my videos.’ We was creating a movement, with the music and videos, and I was producing all of his music in the beginning.”

“[But] there was a lot of differences. My brother F Dot got locked up when they was really getting their stuff back in order. Like last year in November. He get out November of this year. But he was getting his stuff together, they was getting shows and this and that. He ended up getting locked up and it pushed it down. It was basically just a lot of differences, not getting along. You know how that stuff goes with groups and family stuff.”

Uploaded: March 11, 2012

Mixtape: Back from the Dead

DGainz: “Keef already had a buzz by then. That was in March, the Worldstar video had already came out, the ‘3Hunna’ video was already doing numbers, like we had already seen he got potential. Soulja Boy had already did a song with him.

“He hadn’t shot a video with me in a while, since ‘Aimed At You,’ which was like five months. I think originally Dro had called me and he said he wanted [another videographer] Zae to shoot the video. He was like, ‘I don’t think you want to shoot the video, so we want Zae to do it.’ I’m like, ‘I’ll shoot it for him, ain’t no problem with me shooting it.’

“I remember hitting up Zae like yeah, come shoot the video with me. And he came over, but his camera quality didn’t match up with mine. I had just gotten my T3i and I didn’t really know how to use it, that’s why the quality wasn’t as good as it could have been.

“Everybody was just kind of chilling, there were a bunch of females there. And I remember saying, ‘let me hear the song.’ It was on a laptop with really small speakers, and they couldn’t find the song on the computer. I was like, damn, we don’t even got the song to shoot the video. ‘What’s the name of it?’ ‘It’s called ‘I Don’t Like.’’ I remember searching with the search bar and I was like, ‘here it is right here!’I remember playing the song thinking this beat is really catchy. And then I was thinking how are we gonna do the video with these little speakers?

“I remember Chop being there, and I was like Chop can you go get your equipment? I remember Chop leaving and one of the other guys there was like, ‘Want me to grab a bottle?’ There were females there and he was like, ‘I don’t want to be sober right now.’ So we went to the store and grabbed some liquor, and I came back and Chop was setting up his equipment. We just got to drinking, he got to playing a bunch of Keef’s other music, ‘3hunna.’ It was really just everybody chilling and listening to Keef’s music, and then he played ‘I Don’t Like’ and I was just filming them chilling.

I remember him playing the music and I looked over, I see Keef and them over there boppin’ and I’m like yeah, they’re finna start. I just push record, and they got to going crazy. They didn’t even know I was recording at first. If you watch some of the scenes when him and SD are shaking hands, shaking their dreads, they didn’t know I was filming. At the beginning of the video I was on the other side of the room just pointing the camera. That was like the best scene in the video because it was so natural, they didn’t even know I was filming them. Then he turned, saw I was filming and he started interacting with the camera.

“We got to like the third scene and they was like, tired. Like you see them all just standing around at the beginning [of the video], that was the third scene. They was tired. I was like, ‘ya’ll don’t want to shoot more scenes?’ He was like, ‘Hell naw, I’m tired. I’m finna go home’ [laughs].

“The reason why he wanted to shoot the video in the first place was because he was going to court the next day like, ‘I might get locked up.’ Fredo was like, man, we’re gonna shoot some more scenes tomorrow Gaines, because this ain’t enough.’ The next day he got on house arrest. He was like, ‘Just put the video out.’ That’s why it turned out the way it did. It was so simple.”

Uploaded: March 28, 2012

Mixtape: I'm Still a Hitta

DGainz: “That video, I remember originally one of the guys played it on his phone like, ‘Here you go, Durk wants you to shoot a video for it.’ And I couldn’t really hear it on a phone so I didn’t know how to judge it. On the day we were first finna start shooting, they picked me up--we were over at TD’s spot with Keef [the loft where “I Don’t Like” video was shot]. I think I was over there with them, showing them the Louie ‘Motion Picture’ video. I got in the car with Durk and I remember him playing me the song. I’m like, damn, this shit cold--it just comes in, ‘L’s Up for them Hittas,’ I’m like, Durk killed it.

“We didn’t have any particular ideas for the video, like the idea I really heard in my head I knew I couldn’t do because it wasn’t no budget, none of us had money, so I’m just gonna have to make something happen with it. A lot of the ideas I had for the video we didn’t even use. It ended up taking like a month to shoot the video. We weren’t shooting for a whole month, but it didn’t get completed for a month. We shot like a scene a week. There was problems with the camera, then they was having little problems with this and that. That’s why the video is kind of all over the place. A lot of the scenes don’t match up because it took so long.

“I felt like the video could have turned out way better. The song had an okay video but I didn’t feel it was as good as the song. I wanted to do like a big group scene, with like everybody throwing up the L’s. Like it’s ‘L’s Anthem,’ I wanted it to do it like an anthem, like something big. An anthem, like they’re really representing what they talking about.”

Uploaded: March 30, 2012

Mixtape: Ain't You Spenzo

DGainz: “I met Spenzo originally--it was a girl on Twitter. I used to joke with her on Twitter, like trying to socialize with everybody. And I remember her writing that her friend Spenzo raps, like ‘He really want to work with you.’ I was like aight, give him my number. He called me and rapped for me on the phone, he had a freestyle on ‘Racks On Racks.’ I was like damn, he can really rap. He told me he was only 15. I was like, damn you only 15 and rapping like this?

“I remember somebody posting one of his freestyles on Facebook and I was able to see how he looked and get the vibe of him. I was like yeah, he kind of dope. And he threw me off, like he was real persistent. I ain’t never meet nobody that was that persistent so I was kind of hesitant with him. I remember him tweeting something about me, he did a subtweet about me. And I hit him like, I hope you ain’t talking about me. I remember him saying something foul, it wasn’t necessarily disrespectful but it made me feel shitty, like who is this kid talking to?

“I remember him calling me and apologizing like, ‘Man, I just really want this, and you not giving me a chance.’ I was like you know what, let me give you a chance. I ended up going to the studio with him to record the song ‘Windy City.’ We ended up shooting a video for it, and the video turned out crazy. I really liked his vibe. The second video we did was ‘Do This All Night.’”

“One of my favorite videos was Jamie Foxx ‘Blame It,’ that’s the vibe I was going for with the song. I took a whole Hype Williams look with that video, that’s the feel I wanted. We shot it on two different weekends, it took a week to finish it. We shot it, we went to the movie theater and shot a little scene. We shot a scene the next week and wrapped it up. It had a lot of views and all that.”

Uploaded: May 25, 2012

Mixtape: Inspired By the Struggle

DGainz: “The song was actually a year old. It had been on YouTube the year before. I produced it. My brother who was locked up was originally on the song, but they didn’t have any records to do so I just had to chop his verse out and shoot that. ‘Cause like I said earlier, we were having differences. I remember hitting both of them up, like ‘man, we need to meet up and talk and get this music stuff rolling. Ya’ll falling off, you gotta do something.’

“We met up, Choppa and Billionaire, and they was kind of feuding with each other. I was like, man, we bigger than this. We met up, we all got to chilling. I had just bought a new lens or whatever. We were just sitting back, talking--that’s how a lot of shoots I did turn out, and I said ‘do you guys want to shoot a video since we out here?’ They was like, ‘Hell yeah. What song we gonna do?’ I said shit, let’s do this.

“We went out, bought bottles of liquor and weed and all that, and just shot the video. I remember everybody was just out there wildin’, just going crazy. It felt good because we hadn’t did anything in a minute. It was a good feeling, like we might could spark it back up.”

Uploaded: June 24, 2012

Mixtape: Do You Know Who I Am?

DGainz: “When it comes to doing videos, Chella is not like, ‘Just shoot me and call it a video.’ She likes to have her shit in order, like as far as the video goes. I remember her hitting me, ‘This is the idea I got for the video.’ I was actually doing like a Pitchfork interview that day and they rode with me to the video shoot.

“One thing I remember about that video shoot was I just bought some Jordan’s worth $200, and I ended up going in the baseball field and fucking them up. I only wore them like twice, I had sand all on them and messed up my Jordan’s. I remember Chella was snapping on people, like, ‘Shut the fuck up. We trying to shoot.’ Young Chop came out there, a lot of people came out for the shoot. It was fun.”

“Yeah, Chella is more than a co-director, she a real bitch [laughs].”

Uploaded: June 25, 2012

Mixtape: Alter Ego

DGainz: “I originally found out about Tink when Keef had tweeted the ‘3Hunna’ freestyle. I listened to it, and I was like damn, she got some bars. I hit her inbox, like, let me shoot that! And she was like, ‘Zae already hit me.’ I was like, god damn Zae! [Laughs]

“I remember tweeting that somebody should do an R&B version of ‘I Don’t Like.’ She tweeted me like, ‘I got you.’ I remember somebody saying she could sing but I ain’t never heard her. I remember her putting it up and I was like damn, her voice is so different. I’m like damn she can really sing. I seen her potential but she didn’t really have a lot of records online that sparked my attention, so I had recorded a song originally called ‘Just Life.’ I had produced it and recorded it and I remember my pops telling me, ‘Damn, this is the one. You say you want to put out a Rap song to catch some attention. This is the one right here. Keep that record, don’t give it to nobody.’

“Usually I give all my records away, and I was just sitting and thinking about it. I know her potential and I had the record, and sent it to her. She said, ‘Who’s that?’ I’m like, ‘that’s me!’ She said ‘that’s trill and soulful at the same time.’. I said if I send you the instrumental, can you redo it and use mine as a reference? You can do your own verses but use the same hook I have and make it relate to you. ‘Cause what I’m saying relates to me, flip it and make it relate to you.

“She ended up sending me the record and I’m like, god damn this girl got some talent. So I remember we scheduled the video shoot with Elevator. She hit me and she was like, ‘I want to shoot the video by this graffiti wall.’ It ended up being in a Mexican neighborhood, so I remember pulling up and her and her cousin were wearing these colorful shirts, and it reminded me of some Puffy and Mase type shit [laughs]. We were setting up the equipment and some Mexican guy was walking up to her and one walked up to me like, ‘Man, have you ever been to jail? You look familiar.’ I said hell no, I ain’t been to no jail! Elevator was like, ‘We should go shoot somewhere else. I don’t think this is gonna work.’ I was like, no we good.

“We get to shooting and there was a group of Mexicans out there and they was watching and we could tell they was part of a gang. They were looking like they were gonna whoop our ass over here. She get to performing, and they just get to vibing to it, like clapping. I remember Jordan from Elevator was like, ‘I think if the song wasn’t good they would have robbed us’ [laughs]. I remember one of the old ladies was out there dancing.

“We went on top of the roof at Elevator’s loft, we climbed up on the rooftop and I remember everybody being scared as hell to climb up the ladder because it was so narrow. I was scared than a bitch, I was shaking coming down the ladder. But the shoot turned out nice. And it was real hot, [Tink] was sweating out her hair. But that’s what happens when you have no money to put into the visuals. We can’t pay makeup artists so people have to excuse us for that. But it turned out okay to me.”

Uploaded: July 30, 2012

Mixtape: The New Chicago, Vol. 2

DGainz: “I remember we had shot a freestyle, he did a freestyle to ‘3Hunna’ and I didn’t really want to put it out. I had ate some pizza earlier that day with Zae, and I ended up getting sick. I remember going with Spenzo to his house like, I’m just going to edit this ‘3Hunna’ video while I’m over here and I’ll upload it from here.’

“I remember falling asleep and feeling real sick while I was over there. I remember waking up and just hearing him. [sings]’Ayyy’-- I’m like, ‘what the hell is he writing?’. He played me the beat, and I was like, ‘what is this?.’ The day of the video shoot it was so damn hot, like in the video he had to pour a little water on him just to cool off from how hot it was. That was real sweat in the video.

“I remember it being real hot, and him being real playful and pissing me off. He tied his tank top up like some dumb shit, he was real playful. But the energy of the video was so crazy. One of his cousins that was in the video ended up passing away like a couple days later. He got shot and killed at 16. That took an effect on him, like when I was editing the video he came over to watch it and you could tell it was bothering him. But the overall video, we was like, damn. I really seen my potential with that visual, working with we have and being able to deliver something.”

Uploaded: August 1, 2012

Mixtape: Do You Know Who I Am?

DGainz: “I had known Sasha for about a year when we did the ‘Tatted’ record. I remember her coming over to my house and I’m like I got some beats I want you to hear. Let’s do something, let me produce a song for you. I let her go through the beats and she heard that one. She was like, ‘I like this beat.’ I put the ‘Tatted like a biker boy’ [Gucci Mane] sample in and then I gave her the beat and she wrote her verses to it. She originally recorded the song at my house, and with my guy Rich Laurel at his studio.

“I shot that one with Elevator too. I remember the first scene we shot at Lotice's house, he had a little tattoo setup in his crib. We shot it with the black backdrop and one of the girls that was there got a tattoo in the process. Then we went downtown and shot the bicycle scene when she’s on the back of motorcycle. I remember her telling me she was scared.

“I remember that the other girls that was dancing in the video, they were dancing awkward as hell. I remember editing it like, man, they asses can’t dance [laughs]. Sasha was swagging thought, but she had a couple of girls in the background that were kind of pissing me off.

“[Seeing Sasha perform it at Santos Party House in New York] was the only time seeing it out, ‘cause I can’t go to other shows because of my hearing impairment. But I remember it coming on and just saw the people bouncing to it. They were bouncing on their tippy toes. And they just started going crazy when the beat dropped. I loved the reaction to see people vibing to my music that I helped create. I remember the deejay playing ‘Money Dance’ after that and I seen everybody going crazy over that. It was a great feeling coming to New York and seeing people like the music I create too.”

Uploaded: August 27, 2012

Mixtape: Next 2 Blow

DGainz: “I originally met M.I.C. when they sent me some emails to book visuals and I listened to one of the songs that was in the email and it was a song by IL Will, who is in the group. It was called ‘I Can’t Go’ and it was off a Chop beat, I remember hearing it, like damn this song is nice. I ended up shooting a video for that, and that’s what brought us in tune with each other.

“They wanted me to shoot something else and they sent me two songs. They sent me ‘Same Shit, Different Day’ and they sent me ‘All We Know Is Drill.’ I remember I didn’t even listen to the song ‘cause it had ‘Drill’ in it and around that time everybody was complaining about the ‘Drill’ [stuff] and I was really trying to get away from that so I really didn’t even take a chance with the record. I listened to “Same Shit, Different Day’ and I thought damn this song is cold.

“The day of the video shoot I told them I wanted a girl to be dancing and all this mess and they like, ‘Why you want a girl dancing?’ I told them why and they, ‘Oh, we thought you were shooting ‘All We Know Is Drill.’ I’m like no, I want to shoot the other song. For the convenience I said I would just go ahead and shoot it. I remember even shooting it thinking damn, this is just another hood video. So in my mind I was thinking I gotta make it look like more than that. So that’s why I applied the filter I did and did all the editing I did just to bring out that it was more than hood video. I tried to make it more live, and it ended up being one of my favorite visuals I’veI shot today.”

Uploaded: August 28, 2012

Mixtape: N/A

DGainz: “That was one of the songs that was originally mine, too, like Tink’s “Fingers Up.” The song came about because I wear Converse a lot, it’s one of my favorite shoes to wear. I remember people used to get at me because I wear Converse. ‘Ah, he broke because he wear Converse.’ I’m like damn, everybody wear Converse. So I flipped it like, Ya’ll couldn’t walk a mile in my Converse. I remember spitting Spenzo my hook and spitting my verse. He was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’ll get on that.’ I just sat back and was like, I want him to do the whole song. I called him, ‘just do another verse to it.’

“The video was kind of rushed. I wanted to do it at a skate park, like listening to the song and the vibe of it, it just felt…I don’t know, I just got a vision of a skate park, like an L.A. type of look. It ended up raining that day and I was doing a feature for RedEye, they was coming out to interview me. I was like, I don’t want it to be a hood video, I didn’t want the interviewer or the photographer feeling uncomfortable. They was reporting the video shoot, I didn’t want them to be like, ‘Everybody out there with dreads, gun gestures etc.’ So I was like, why not shoot it this way?

“We went to the skate park and it rained, so we couldn’t go to Lake Shore Drive. We had to go to Logan Square under the bridge so we wouldn’t get rained on. At first I remember when we go out there, one of the little kids that was out there—we was just recording random stuff and he was like, ‘Don’t point that fucking camera at me!’ But Spenzo ended up talking to them, and the girls went up there, and they ended up being down for the video. Everybody had fun.”

Uploaded: September 14, 2012

Mixtape: Next 2 Blow

DGainz: “I heard that song when they sent over that and ‘All We Know Is Drill,’ and the vibe when I actually heard the song just caught my attention. I remember I was in the park with my brother Choppa, heard it in the headphones and I was like, damn. I just played it over and over and I was like ‘listen to this.’ Everybody was vibing to it, it had that chill—you can hear the struggle behind it. I really wanted to do like a simple video to it.

“We went to the suburbs and shot the scene of the girl dancing, and then we rolled to the hood and Elevator helped me shoot that one too. That was like a smooth video shoot. Ain’t no problems, no police. It just came out nice, that’s one of my favorite records I’ve shot a video for. Lil Chris is a real cool dude. That was my first time using a car jib. I think it came out great.”

Uploaded: October 18, 2012

Album: Finally Rich

DGainz: “Me and Keef wasn’t really talking, not on bad terms or nothing, but he got the deal and he was traveling. And then all the stuff with the Lil JoJo situation, it was just a bunch of crazy shit going on. I remember him dropping a leak to the song, matter of fact he dropped a leak to the song before the JoJo stuff. I remember he dropped the leak on September 1st and the JoJo stuff happened on the fourth. But I heard it, and I heard it was a Chop beat, I’m like damn, him and Chop got back together. I heard they were getting back together, doing some music. When I heard it, it was so catchy.

“I remember posting it on Facebook and I said, I can’t even lie, this shit is raw. And me posting that was actually me reaching out to Keef, like let me shoot this shit [laughs]. He called me out the blue a couple of weeks ago. He was like, ‘What up.’ Who’s this? ‘Man, you don’t miss me or something?’ I’m like who the hell is this? ‘It’s Sosa. I want you to shoot something.’ When you want me to shoot something? ‘Man, I want to shoot something tonight if you want to.’ I can’t do nothing tonight, maybe we can try tomorrow.

“We ended up shooting it like three days later, he picked me up and I remember on our way to loft—we shot it at the same loft as ‘I Don’t Like’ on the other side of the loft. Before we went to the loft we stopped at Wendy’s. We pulled up to the Wendy’s, the girl was like, ‘Welcome to Wendy’s, how can we help you?’ Keef was like, ‘Let me get two Baconators, Bang Bang!’ He was like playing with the people, and I’m like what the hell? This dude is funny.

“So we pulled up and they seen it was Keef, she look at the window like, ‘Chief Keef, what you doing at our Wendy’s? Who all up in there?’ They saw a guy with a cross on his forehead, and Keef was like, ‘That’s Fredo’s little brother.’ ‘Hey Fredo’s little brother!’ Then she was like, ‘Pull up and we’ll bring your food out.’

“It was taking like 30 minutes with the food, and we’re like what the hell. I remember the whole, everybody, all the workers in the damn Wendy’s came out. They were all looking in the car and were like, ‘Damn, it’s Chief Keef.’ He had to get out and take pictures, and I remember a girl looking in the backseat like, ‘Who else in here? Hey DGainz!’ I’m like, how the hell do you know my face? I started feeling famous.

“We ended up going to the loft and we was actually supposed to shoot a song called ‘Finally Famous,’ and he let me hear it. I was like, yeah this is decent. He played another song called ‘No Tomorrow’ and that was a nice song too. But in the back of my head, I’m like I know I want to shoot that ‘Love Sosa.’ I know he got that in his iPod somewhere. I just went down and listened to it and I was playing it. And he heard me listening to it, he was like, ‘You want to shoot that?’ I’m like hell yeah. We just went from there and shot the video.

“With the ['Love Sosa'] video, coming from ‘I Don’t Like’ all the way since March, I wanted to show how much better I got with the camera, as far as handling it. I know Keef has a real big audience so I knew with that video I really had to step my game up with handling the camera and the overall editing, because I was reaching a whole new audience. I really just wanted to give it a movie, chill feel. It was real laid back. Me and Keef worked out the details of the video and then we shot it.

“I put like a flare on it. That’s why I did that on purpose, to give it—small details like that, make it stand out from my other work. I dropped a preview the next day, and they went crazy, like damn. The reason it took so long for the video to come out was because all the details was still going through. That’s why it took a week for the video to come out because we were still getting all the details together.

“I remember the day we dropped the video, I put it out at noon. I looked an hour later, it had 25,000 views. The next day I check it, it has 250,000 before that morning. Honestly I predicted, because ‘I Don’t Like’ did like 100,000 the first week, I predicted 300,000 at the most the first week. It ain’t even been a week and it’s almost at 2 million views [It’s now approaching 10 million]. That shit, I knew it was gonna do numbers, and the day we decided to put out the video was the day the Sun Times printed him up on the cover. It was like luck, he had the craziest luck. Even the negative press works in his favor.

“It kind of opened up a new audience for me too. I was seeing numbers on my other videos go up, my Twitter followers, my Instagram. It showed that me and Keef can still work together even with him having a deal. It still shows that we can make something good for people to watch and listen to.

“[Love Sosa] was different because first it shows how advanced Chop's gotten with the beats. I heard the beat and I’m like damn, Chop stepped his game up. It was like a chill vibe, like that song could probably get played in the club and go up or you can ride to it. Keef wasn’t really rapping on the song, he was more so harmonizing. It wasn’t like a simple hook. He put some effort into the hook and it just caught my attention. That’s what I originally want to shoot as a video when he put out the snippet. I hadn’t heard the whole song until the day we shot the video. So all I had to work off of was the hook when I originally heard the song. When I heard the snippet I told people about it, like man, I think this shit is going to be a hit.

“I would rather watch a video than listen to audio. Most of the traffic nowadays is from mobile devices, so you got a phone to watch videos. They don’t want to listen to the song, that’s for the iPod. But if you riding around, kids want to see Keef. That’s the thing about Keef, people don’t understand why he is so big. It’s because Keef is more than just a rapper, he could sell an action figure. Not only do people want to hear Keef, they want to see him. Like oh, what is he going to do next? He’s appealing to people so that’s why videos work in his favor, people don’t just want to hear him, they want to see him. It’s like a plus to see hear and see him at the same time so that’s why I think the video is doing so well.”