Urban Outfitters - Blog - Yours Truly "Pillow Fight, Pillow Talk"

10/22/10 02:48PM

Yours Truly "Pillow Fight, Pillow Talk"

Tonight, Yours Truly hosts their first solo event, "Pillow Fight, Pillow Talk" at the Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn. Since Yours Truly is one of our favorite music sites—and our collaborators on the Secret Generator Series videos—we caught up with one of the founders, Will, to see what goes on behind the scenes.

What distinguishes Yours Truly videos?

It’s a simple, no frills style–there’s no tricky editing. It’s basically a way of shooting the artist so it’s not about the filming, it’s about the artist. We try to be there to capture the performance, as opposed to making an artistic statement and show off, because it’s not about us.

What have been some of your favorite videos that you've shot?

We were recently in Chicago for the Deerhunter shoot, and we stayed with this band called How To Dress Well, and it was a great. The night before we left we were like, “We should film something while we’re here.” I had been talking to this guy Tom about hip-hop the entire time. He’s a Gucci Mane, OJ Da Juiceman, swag type of hip-hop guy and I’m more of a backpacker hip-hop fan, so we were dissing each other about our hip-hop tastes. But one thing we did agree on was R. Kelly. So we plugged this crappy keyboard into the wall and Tom started singing this song called “I Wish” by R. Kelly and he just transformed the song. It was crazy to see him do it; it was stripped down and beautiful.

Another favorite was this short documentary on Freddy Gibbs. He’s consistent and honest, and if you hang out with him you’ll hear the stories that turn up in the songs. It’s comforting to know there are rappers who sing about things they really did instead of create a caricature of themselves. I’m proud of the piece we did on him. He’s just a good dude who deserves the attention.

Oh! This is a highlight: I love this rapper Big K.R.I.T . from Mississippi. I got into him pretty early and started sending his music around to people at places like Pitchfork. I got in touch with his manager and I was like, “Look dude, get yourself to San Francisco and I’ll make it worth your while.” I wanted to pair him up with this amazing soul band called The Park. So Big K.R.I.T. and his manager Johnny flew out to San Francisco and stayed on the couch for three days. They recorded an EP where the band played the songs from the EP live, adding a new song they just came up with on the spot. That was the first time an artist flew out to do something with us. It was the first time Big K.R.I.T. had been to California, and it was the first time someone went out of their way to do something with us. It was a cool experience hanging out and showing him around the city; we went to all these great restaurants, and he’s like, “Damn, this shit is booming.” That was his word for everything! It was like Yours Truly was a matchmaker who connected the dots between these people that would never have played together. We’ll share that really soon.

How many people work on Yours Truly?

There are four of us. Nate is the director, and it’s his style that we’ve taken as our cue as to how we want to be seen. Bob is the site’s creative director, and he helps edit a lot of the pieces. Caleb works with me a lot on booking bands, so we’re the sites curators. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so fun. I work on it way more than any nine-to-five job. There’s no beginning, middle, or end. It’s just work. For this event, Caleb booked it at Glasslands and we started putting it together. He booked some bands, I booked some bands, Bob did the flyer, and now we’re in New York!