The Home of Every Day is a Canvas
The Home of Every Day is a Canvas
con·tent cre·a·tor (/kənˈtent//krēˈādər/): the contribution of information to any media and most especially to digital media for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content is "something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing or any of various arts" for self-expression, distribution, marketing and/or publication.
Content creator is one of those phrases that is thrown around a lot these days, especially in social media. It's true that any time you create new content, in any medium, it's "content creation". When I do graphic design and branding work for my clients, that is content creation. When I create remixes, that is content creation. And so on. I created this page specifically to showcase a couple of unique projects that I am proud of. One is a Notorious B.I.G. Instagram Live special that I produced and the other is a contest collaboration that I did with musician, poet, activist, documentarian, and singer-songwriter, Michael Franti.
– Statik Selektah On Air (referring to “EDIAC X Biggie”)
When we ended up in quarantine in early 2020, I decided it was the right time to curate a Biggie rarities show. I began planning out my very first Instagram Live show, where I would be opening my Biggie vault and playing 2 hours of rare demos, freestyles, remixes and alternate tracks. I curated 30+ of my rare tracks chronologically, starting with Biggie rapping at 16 years old and ending with his final radio freestyle in L.A., just days before his murder.
The month prior, I had sent an unreleased Biggie verse to friend and legendary producer Statik Selektah who remixed it and gave me a thank you on his Instagram. The clip was viewed over 50k times and picked up by top music media outlets.
In 2019, the annual Levitate Music and Arts Festival brought Michael Franti to my hometown in Massachusetts. Franti’s energetic and inspiring set resonated with me and as I always do, I took a lot of photos at the show. Shortly thereafter, I discovered Franti’s non-profit, Do it For the Love, whose mission is to inspire hope and healing through the power of music by supporting clinical and community-based music therapy, evidence-based research, and providing live music experiences.
I decided to use one of my photos seen here as a limited edition project to help raise awareness for this great organization. I started with the photo of Franti holding his guitar ‘Mama Brown’ named after his Grandma. From there I created a digital print that was 1/1. The before and after here shows the photos and the digital print. (use your mouse or finger to slide the divider to see)
A couple month’s later, when he was back in town, I met up with Franti at the House of Blue’s in Boston to add our signatures to the print, and prepared an Instagram giveaway.
The giveaway showed Franti and I holding the limited edition print and encouraged entrants to follow the Do It For The Love Instagram Page The giveaway contest lasted 30 days and we had a good turnout. On December 5th, 2019, I randomly announced the winner on IG Live.
