Prior to dropping his hilarious Netflix series It's Bruno, we spoke with writer/director/rapper Slick Naim about juggling his work in Hollywood with his work as a recording artist. "It's probably one of the biggest struggles that I've had," Naim admitted. "I'm making sure I'm able to do both. The amount of work that I'm having, and these opportunities I've never had before, you'd gotta start turning down opportunities that you would have killed for earlier because you need time and energy to put into the music."
Naim is putting his words to action with the release of his video for "Lost It All," a song taken from his latest album, Proof of Concept. Similar to his previous visuals, he's taken time to craft a short film that's as visually engaging as the story weaved together with his lyrics. The song is written from the perspective of both a detective and the mob boss he's been chasing for the past six years. "I always had this idea of a song where its a cop versus a mobster he’s been trying to arrest forever," Naim explained, "and we would hear [their story] from both sides. I heard this beat Chris Hierro produced and it made the most sense.
"I’m a visual guy before anything," he continued, "so I pictured the whole story play out and then wrote the raps to compliment it. I wanted to create a short crime story with a twist in the vein of The Usual Suspects, Primal Fear, and The Gift where the protagonist gets hit with a grimy surprise they didn’t see coming giving the villain the upper hand. Being a filmmaker, there’s always going to be some sort of storytelling in my music projects."
The best part? Naim actually portrays both the detective and the mob boss in the video. "I always like to try new things and push my creative," Naim said. "Since I rapped the mobster's verse in a different voice I wanted to take on this new character. I worked with a few SFX [and] makeup people I previously worked with on shows like Snowfall and Animal Kingdom and wanted to collaborate and mix their ideas with mine to create this crazy looking mob boss character. We couldn’t go TOO wild though cause we needed to be able to apply the makeup within two hours max since I was directing and acting in it; I couldn’t have the crew waiting on the clock too long as we needed to make our day manageable. It was a lot of fun being that character though. I came out on set and people didn’t even recognize me at all." That's some real Teddy Perkins shit.
You can check out the official video for Slick Naim's "Lost It All" up top, and if you rock with this, be sure to check out his Proof of Concept album.
