It seems like only yesterday we were introducing you to San Francisco's dream team duo Rob Pera and Patrick Brown and their wonderful collaborative world of WOOF. If Rob and Patrick's own respective résumés weren't already boasting some street cred, their conjoined powerhouse has found them working with today's wildest talents from A-1, Antwon, Deniro Farrar, ST 2 Lettaz, Mykki Blanco, Mistah F.A.B., Shady Blaze, Swiftumz, Tragik, amongst other folks from the Bay and the world over. Having dropped their recent album, The Thrill Of It All, it is our honor to present the turnt-up video for "Still Snørkeling" featuring Kyle The Fantasy, courtesy of director Frank Door and a GoPro Hero 3 cam working on overtime.
Shot on a sunny day in the Mission District, Kyle gets into scuba mode with the camera following him from the front as the entire neighborhood becomes his pool party. WOOF rips from the Right Said Fred-"I'm too sexy for your party" assertion, eschewing the club trends of "molly", "turnt-up", to the production allegiances of Diplo, Hemsworth, A-Trak. and onward. Keeping the fantasy in full kick, Kyle stuffs his face with burgers, dons different shades, turns it up and turns it down poolside while clowning occasionally on the beat.
"Still Snørkeling" is a showcase of how the Bay keeps the beat pushing, with Rob and Patrick at the helm and Kyle back and acting bad in broad daylight. "Kyle back, shut your mouth, stuff I don't give a fuck about, ancient coins, ninja stars, famous paintings up in the car, submarines, hand grenades, knit socks that my grandma made, farmer's market, fantasies, cucumbers and tangerines, family hate me, children scared, real G's with silverware". From the humorous lyrical mix that shuns moscato and threatens to go all Gucci Mane-on-the-bottle-smashing-offensive-in-the-VIP over some desert wine; WOOF further establishes themselves as an institution for not only The Mission, Different Fur Studios, and the Bay, but a world class beat mashing crew.
Half of WOOF and Different Fur Studio operator Patrick Brown breaks down the video, what's new and next with the WOOF-ers, various dream collaborations in the works, with an open invitation to Drake.
When you both made "Still Snorkeling", was it kind of a tongue-in-cheek commentary of the turnt-up world of producers you all work with, the Diplos, Ryan Hemsworths, A-Traks?
We spent so much time perfecting The Thrill Of It All that it was refreshing to just knock out something. Rob originally made this beat as part of a batch we had for Mykki Blanco. I loved it but it didn't get picked up so it was just sitting in our Dropbox. i had the I'm too sexy theme going in my head for a few days and i kept repeating it with different subjects. I started out trying to name off everyone I know who DJs, or Produces, or Raps, or throws parties, but it was too hard making some of them fit rhythmically and i didn't think it would be funny if I just 'shouted out' a few of my friends. The Diplo line stuck because I felt like it really encapsulated the joke… I'm so outside of club culture but Rob and I have so many friends who are working in it, that the song is more of a joke about us than anyone else. Kyle really brought it together in the end with that disgruntled rap.
Is The Thrill Of It All sort of like the wonderful world of audio adventures that you get to witness firsthand on the production end but then get to repackage and re-represent a whole different, synergistic rendering of pop culture and pop music?
That album was a concept. We wanted to take our time with it and make something that incorporated all these performers and lyricists in ways that were uniquely ours. We didn't want to make the easy tracks, the obvious arrangements, the beats you've heard. We wanted to make something that came from left field. Something harder to digest but with substance. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work putting it together. We reworked certain tracks multiple times but then often would hand things off to Sean Paulson to mix and just give him a direction and let him be creative with it. I even stressed over the artwork and was really happy when we got Ryan De La Hoz to let us use one of his original pieces for the cover because finally after being all worried about it, it just came together so easy. He makes some really dope shirts and stuff too, check them out over at cooltry.net. You know my whole career is based around helping artists shine and succeed and get their work and name out there properly, so anything I work on will be an extension of that. Rob and I do want to produce records for people, and we've used this to establish at least a starting point of a way for people get to know our ideas.
Also want to hear more about the wild Frank Door video of going mental around the Mission in SF. What was development and prep like for this video?
We have a bunch of GoPro cameras around the studio for bands to use and I'm pretty sure Frank Door, whose office is on the second floor of Different Fur Studios was blasting 'Still Snørkeling' and Nic Pope, one of our engineers, walked up and started dancing like a clown and a video was born. It's like the Perfect Storm, and Frank is Marky Mark and Nic Pope is George Clooney, and we're all going down to Davey Jones locker while Kyle complains about the fish smell in the captain's quarters.
What is the beef with the cheap moscato?
Every couple years some rapper starts shilling some 'new' drink and everyone in the industry jumps on the bandwagon, right now it's moscato. Which is basically dessert wine… so right now you can go to a club and order yourself some dessert wine. Ha ha, THINK ABOUT THAT. Rap cats are going to the club and ordering moscato as their classy drink. That is fucking hilarious to me. I don't really have beef with it, I just wish frozen piña coladas were the drink this year because those are delicious and I would be down to walk around in the club with an umbrella in my cup cooling off on some pineapple coconut business. They probably won't ever be popular though because they're hella fattening.
What's next in the cards for WOOF?
Well we've had a slow down over the last six months because Rob and I have both been so busy, but we're trying to find some time to put an ep or some singles together. Rob is working on some solo stuff, and we have a track with SAFE that we should probably release at some point soon. WOOF started as an exercise in creativity, and that's what it'll continue to be. I feel like we've been on a little hiatus, but when we get back into things full swing we're gonna come out with something epic.
Who will WOOF collaborate with next?
We have some tracks we're working on finishing up with Justin Loans and Sad Andy, we produced a song for an upcoming Bird Call ep, but to be honest we're really holding out for that phone call from Drake…YO Drizzy, I'm gonna be in Montreal over Xmas for a day or two if you wanna grab some poutine or something, I'm sure you remember me, you pointed at me and my tall friend while you were overhead on the catwalk at your Oakland show. I was wearing the black DFWC hat and had a black eye. Anyway, hit me up. I got beats.
The Thrill Of It All is available now on Bandcamp.
