Da Fam Inc. recently had the pleasure of interviewing Shomi, the twenty-seven year old mastermind behind Virginia’s media powerhouse, Illusive Media. During a soul-stretching forty-minute sit-down, an animated Shomi gave us insights into Illusive’s inception, hiatus, and, eventually, tremendous spiritual growth. Featuring humorous and unexpected anecdotes about Malice, Pharrell, and Danja Handz, the interview can be read, in its entirety, below. Shomi’s work has galvanized an entire region, and it is with much excitement that we bring it to you:
How did you get your start directing videos – how was Illusive Media actually formed?
Basically, I was going to college at O.DU. in Norfolk, VA…and I was studying computer science, doing programming. As a younger kid, I was definitely a nerd and I was always into video games, so I got into programming. I wanted to be a hacker and all this crazy stuff, but at the same time, I was always into music. My cousins are all hip-hop heads, and techno heads, so I got to listen to a lot of diverse music. Right around when I was in college, The Neptunes were starting to blow up also. I was a big fan of them, being that they were from my area, and I started getting interested in music production. The first artist that I worked with – as kind of just a ‘fun’ project, a passion project, something I did while I was in school – was Nicholas F.
So this is around ’99, ’00? What time frame are we talking about?
This was around when the first Clipse album dropped; I didn’t even know the Clipse then. I was definitely a big fan of all the VA hip-hop coming out; Skillz, Nottz, and I wanted to be involved in VA hip-hop. So I was working with Nicholas F., and at first I was just producing beats – I was just using Frooty Loops, didn’t have any other equipment. At first I’d try to pitch him some beats – and Nick’s very picky with beats – so out of a hundred beats, he’d only pick one – and he rapped on one one time, and we were really hype. More and more, I wanted to push my production from a media perspective. I was never really a web designer, but I was always good with computers. So, I made a website for myself, to promote our entertainment (stuff) – just for fun, really. My mindset was still, ‘Once I graduate, I’ll be a programmer’, and music was always going to be a hobby .
So I was making beats for Nick, and eventually, I ran into Magoo, and he was interested in managing me as a producer. Magoo was actually the first to tell me not to mess with the music, he told me I should focus on the web aspect, and that I was good. I never really realized that – it was just something that I did for fun to promote our music. I never really planned on doing videos, but I just loved music, so I was toying around with any kind of media –so we just became multi-media by, kind of being around Nick, by having no budget. If he needed album artwork, I learned Phothoshop; if he needed web design, I learned HTML. Working with Nick, who was an unsigned artist – but he still had a lot of hype around him – to me that was a big deal.
I took Magoo’s advice of not going into the music industry through the production sense, and I wanted to go in doing my own media thing. So I just started learning stuff online, and eventually, through Nick, I met Doug Life – who’s now co-owner of Play Clothes with the Clipse – and Doug introduced me to Fam-Lay, who was just coming out. His buzz was strong, but I don’t think Def Jam really understood it. It was a weird situation, but I took advantage of it. So I showed Fam some of my stuff, and he liked it. So I ended up doing his album artwork, and just being around him in the studio, I would run into Pusha, Pharrell, Chad – and they’d always see me, but they’d have no clue what I was doing there. They had no clue I was doing Fam-Lay’s website, hooking up his Myspace, filming him behind-the-scenes – they had no clue. Eventually, Pusha saw some of my stuff.
The first time I got to work with the Clipse, was doing the mixtape cover for ‘We Got It For Cheap’. Once I designed that cover — that mixtape became buzzworthy anyway – I basically became Pusha’s assistant. Now I was getting closer to the whole Star Trak staff, and my name started going around more. I remember going to Pharell’s house, since they were all roommates at one point, to work on covers and stuff, and he’d be like, ‘Yo, who is this kid?!’ We’d be having these casual conversations about marketing and stuff, and I’d just sit there, soaking it all in.
That cover, and that mixtape, became so big, especially within the indie market – it just opened so many promotional markets. Right around this time, they (The Clipse) were going through that whole situation with Jive, who just didn’t understand them. So we were doing everything on our own – whether taping a little viral video, putting it out on Myspace – we would do it. Me and Pusha’s business relationship became cool, and it was my senior year, and I really didn’t care about being a computer programmer anymore.
Me and Philip (my business partner), in the sixth grade, Pharrell’s mom – she was actually our teacher! We’d be sitting in class, and she’d tell us that her son made Rump Shaker, and we’d be like, ‘whatever’. Years later, we’re hanging out, and I tell Pharrell, and it kind of sparked more conversation. He was still kind of hard to reach out to, because right around this time, his success was just – he’d be in Miami, L.A., all over the place. It almost felt like I would go to Pharrell’s house more than he would. Che was also starting to take notice of what I was doing – it almost became like a family over there.
My first paying gig – The Clipse called me from Texas – they had a lot of money, and they said, ‘These guys just paid us for a feature – let’s shoot a video’; it was a video for a song called “Soldier Ride”. Their ex-manager, Tony, he was everywhere – Miami one day, he was in Texas. Who else could they find so last minute, to just go out there, and shoot a video? They offered to pay me cash, and pay for my ticket – so the next day, we flew right out. We went out to Texas, with no idea of what we were going to shoot.
Malice is always a creative dude – so we just came up with a bunch of ideas based on their previous lifestyle. This was at a time when I still didn’t know much about videos – around the time the ‘Mr. Me Too’ video came out. We used the money from that video, to rent out an office, and we were the talk of Virginia. If you want to get anything media-done, you’ve got to go to Illusive Media.
Virginia is mostly known for its producers, so the Clipse are looked up to as – well, if you’re working with the Clipse, you’re the shit. Pusha and all those guys would always come to our office, so that also brought a lot of attention. A lot of our early clients were just straight-up dope boys that wanted to get websites done. Music videos, all these kinds of things – the money was coming in fast.
Eventually, Danja Handz became one of our clients. I remember he would come to my house, just doing construction. Then one day he was like, ‘Yo, I’m placing stuff on Justin’s album’. I was like, ‘Shit! I’ve got to get you a Myspace!’ So we created this crazy concept for it – it was like an MPC – and I think it’s been three years, and I still get work from that. They haven’t changed it yet.
Now we have Danja on the roster, we have the Clipse, and through Danja, we got J.R. Rotem as a client – I ended up doing his Myspace. We met with Sean Paul’s manager, the clients just started coming in.
About last year, maybe the end of ’07, I was starting to get worn out. I was making good money, but since I’m hardly use to seeing money like this, I started doing dumb stuff – I bought a Benz in cash, Infiniti truck here. We were so excited about it, but within the company, ego’s were developing, and people started going in their own direction. By ’08, the company had broken up.
Me and my partner Philip, we broke away, but kept the name Illusive, and my other partner, Curtis, he had gone a different direction. It was all because we were all being stupid, being around so much celebrity, it just got to our heads.
I wasn’t really happy with myself, and at that point, I was going through a lot of personal struggle. At the same time, Malice was actually going through the same thing – a spiritual struggle. One day, Pusha called me to film a segment for MTV for Play Clothes. I didn’t want to do it, but my brother told me to go. I went, and Malice just had this look on him – when we talked, he was never really the business, “business” type of person. He always played the background, even in the Clipse. You’d know him for his lyrics, but visually, you’d never see him as much. At that point, he was going through all the experiences – spiritual things – and so was I, so we just kind of connected. We were just talking about it, and we were like, ‘I know there’s a way to take this stuff, this entertainment lifestyle, and flip it into something positive.’
A couple months later, their manager got indicted for all these things, it was just crazy. Malice was like, ‘Yo man, we gotta make a change’. Spiritually, he was closer to God, and he said, ‘We’ve done a lot of things wrong, but that’ not the message we wanna show’. There’s the story – but then there’s also the downside to it. Even if you do live that crazy lifestyle, you can’t glorify it – there’s got to be both sides told. When it comes to ideas – Malice is genius – so these vlogs start coming out. He’ll call me and be like, ‘Yo, I got this idea, straight from God’ – (laughs) – we gotta get it done!
By Nisarg Lives
In part 2 of our interview tomorrow Shomi discusses Illusive Media’s first time getting paid, breaking up over ego, working with the Clipse and Pharrell, finding spirituality and making a comeback.
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