Kudzu?
What's That?
Just like the two young hip-hop artists I had just met, I was clueless about it all. I had flown down to Atlanta GA. to photograph an album package for some duo named 'OutKast'. LaFace Records had hired me based on my artwork using darkroom techniques in which I combined multiple images into a single but semi-believable scene. About a year earlier my girlfriend Liz (now wife) had introduced me to the wonders of Photoshop 1.0 so that I could also put together color composites as well. Big Boi and Dre wanted me to create a wild vision for their upcoming album 'ATLiens'. Much to my amusement the duo referred to me as 'Slick' and my artwork technique as 'hocus pocus'.
In those early pre-internet days I did a lot of my 'research' into the musicians I would be photographing at the Broadway and 4th Street Tower Records in NYC. I had never heard of these guys and I was quite pleased when I found a copy of their first album with a mediocre dark portrait of them on the cover. Phew, at least I had a pretty good chance at producing something cooler than that!
Shortly after I arrive at the LaFace headquarters in Atlanta two young energetic guys bounded into the meeting room. They talked so fast that I had to focus to try to follow their 'rap'. It was immediately clear that they were funny, oddly charming, and very sharp.
Dre: Slick, we got some ideas
Big Boi: Uh huh
Dre: Smoke, at my house in my bedroom, lot of smoke in the room.
Big Boi: Lot of smoke, us at the keyboards
Dre: Car, us in car by freeway
Big Boi: Uh huh, car, freeway, we know where
Dre: Gotta get 'Goodie Mob'
Big Boi: Slick, you know 'Goodie Mob' (I didn't), you have to get shot of us with 'Goodie Mob'
Dre: Gotta get 'Goodie Mob'
Me: No problem, 'Goodie Mob'
Dre: Kudzo
Big Boi: Uh huh, kudzo
Me: What's kudzu?
Dre: Kudzu house, we'll show you
Big Boi: Definitely kudzu
Dre: Let's go for a ride to the kudzo house
We got into a little sports car, me folded up in the tiny backseat. About 10 minutes down the freeway another car zoomed alongside of us. A bunch of teenage girls leaned out of windows all of them screaming at the top of their lungs and waving at the guys. It was then that I realized that my two fast talking new friends were somebody.
The kudzu house turned out to be an old crumbled, vine encrusted abandoned house. By the time we got out there darkness was setting in and it was cold. We weren't scheduled to shoot for another couple of days but I did some test shots of the guys. I had been experimenting with a technique using a dark red filter which caused the highlights on my transparency film to turn bright orange. Much to my disappointment the cover shot I created of the car floating down the river wasn't used on the album package cover. My test shots never saw the light of day until three weeks ago when a publishing company licensed them from me for some sort of usage.
One of the most fun shoots I ever had, but at the time I did not foresee that they would shortly brakeout and become mainstream stars.
