Wiz Khalifa
“It’s a way of speaking things into existence,” filmmaker Marguerite de Bourgoing says at the close of the Kickstarter pitch video for her music documentary The World Is Yours. She’s talking about how hip hop’s next generation is using the internet to rewrite the rules of the rap game – the movie’s chief subject – but she could be talking about how she and her team are making their own project happen. What is Kickstarter if not a starter kit for speaking a dream into reality?
It’s a most congruent method to raise finishing funds for The World Is Yours, which looks at how artists like Wiz Khalifa, the Odd Future collective, and the all-conquering Lil B the BasedGod (whose own Basedworld doc is reportedly due out next month) are forging a revolution with digital tools – harnessing the power of social media and self-promotional genius to “to collapse the music industry,” building their own buzz and bypassing/co-opting the big-label gatekeepers. It’s a DIY continuum that runs from house parties to mixtapes and file shares to YouTube and Twitter, each step opening up new space to empower enterprising artists and audiences.
Befitting its title, The World Is Yours promises viewers “the ultimate guide of how to become successful in the digital arena,” with the likes of Wiz and Odd Future sound engineer/DJ Syd the Kyd (now frontwoman of her own band called – wait for it – the Internet) telling their stories and sharing their secrets for digital revolution. After four years of production, the film is almost wrapped – an abridged version has already shown on French television – and the $15,000 Kickstarter nut will fund editing, graphics, and sound mixing to ready The World Is Ours for an anticipated spring release.
The filmmakers know the scene and the attendant cultural territory pretty well: producer/director de Bourgoing is the founder of multimedia hip hop site LA Stereo; writer Taj Frazier is a USC communications prof with an upcoming book on black revolutionary activism; and co-producer Rebecca Haithcoat is a former LA Weekly assistant music editor who writes about hip hop at Noisey, MySpace, Red Bull, and elsewhere. With a touch of their subjects’ exuberant confidence, they’re anticipating a launch at SXSW. The Kickstarter deadline is midnight Pacific time on Friday night and they’re getting close – click on the widget below to help push them over the top.