Providence artist Eric Axelman has a peculiar style of hip-hop. Either with the dynamic group The Funk Underground or while he’s riding solo, Axelman has a cerebral vocal delivery that has a way of telling the listener how he’s feeling through bars and rhythms. His artistic vision also shines through his music videos that are exuberant in florescent colors and innovative creativity. Featuring Chloe Kibble and Deejay Kellan, Axelman has a new video out for soulful R&B infected single “Got To Give It To Me”, off of his October 2016 debut album Too Much. It’s a sleek, sneaky track, and the video gives off a proper late-night party vibe.
“I often make very narrative songs focused on a particular character or story, but here I was trying to be as minimalist as possible while trying to convey as much emotion as I could with as few words as possible,” Axelman tells Vanyaland. “I think this song and video are about the difficulty and beauty of being with someone else, and the very different emotions involved that happy almost simultaneously during intimacy. For shooting, I’m not a fantastic dancer but luckily a lot of my friends are, and I convinced a bunch of my friends to come to my house a few months ago for a few hours. We then turned my living room into a film studio. We blacked out the windows, put up screens, and messed with the lighting, and came out with some pretty cool dream like sequences, which we then complimented with green screen shots at AS220.”
The shoot, however, wasn’t as smooth as the song.
“My landlord was pretty pissed that we made so much noise, he told me bluntly that I could never do that again, but we were able to get what we wanted,” Axelman adds. “In terms of shots, I tried to be really abstract and make as many of the scenes seem like dreams as possible. I always really like walking the line between reality and fantasy, which I tried to do a bunch here. The video was shot by Sam Eilertsen and Nik Damants, and edited by Nik Damants and myself.”
Axelman plans on putting out a new music video every two months, so keep the eyes peeled on his Facebook page to see what comes out next. While we wait, check out the music video for “Got To Give It To Me” and get down with the groove.