Prince Sprauve – An Xperience Interview

Prince Sprauve – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

Photo Credit: Mark Davis

RRX: How’s it going?

PS: It’s going great.

RRX: Yeah, things are looking good, man. You really just came across my radar. I saw the versus music video that you did between the old school and the new school rappers. I thought it was brilliant.

PS: Thank you. I appreciate that.

RRX: I know it was local 518 cats that were in it, but everybody needs to hear this worldwide, you know? I think that’s gonna grow some legs.

PS: Oh yeah, it definitely will. I think it’s a topic that hasn’t been talked about yet. There’s some bits and pieces around it where people have harsh feelings, but no one has really sat down and really had a discussion. I run a film program down at the S.E.A.T. Center. I built a recording studio down there. I teach 18 and up, so my students are in their 20s and early 30s. This was actually our first project that we decided to take on … to shoot a music video. So I asked, what are you guys thinking? If it’s a cipher, what’s the theme? And a lot of them chose the old school versus new school and the differences between how each group feels about each other.

RRX: There’s a lot of jokes going on, but then they really took the more serious approach.

PS: Yes, what we were really trying to accomplish with this was to just spark the discussion and, not for nothing … a lot of people have jumped on the conversation since we’ve dropped that cipher. Many have reached out about dropping their own version, and they’re feeling inspired again.

RRX: Yeah, I loved every minute of it. But also, there’s a message that you catch within the video. One of the lines that Eighty Gee said in there … “We only use our guns as a last resort.”

PS: Right.

RRX: Growing up in the time that I did, there was definitely less gun violence, but there was also a code. Stuff did go down back then, I’m not gonna say it didn’t, but … it didn’t seem to go down as senseless.

PS: Yeah, I think today with social media and everything else, it’s like you can become who you want to become. I mean, when I was growing up, if you really wanted to be that guy, you had to be outside, and people had to validate and verify you. Nowadays that verification don’t come. You can be whoever you wanna be behind social media, you know what I’m saying? You don’t have to do that in real life. And I think social media has actually made us less social in a lot of ways. Our young people don’t know how to interview, they don’t know how to look you in your eyes. They don’t know nothing about keeping your back straight … firm handshake. They don’t know anything about that type of contact, but what they can tell you is how to be on Instagram and go on Twitch and stream and do all that extra stuff. They can tell you all that, and I think that’s why a lot of this happens out here. A lot of the older generation does feel like … if we had what you have, we would have been way further, but there’s no telling if we would have did the same thing, if we would have destroyed ourselves, right? So, there’s more opportunity now, but is there really more opportunity? I just think the conversation is something that just needed to be had.

RRX: I agree. The internet, we didn’t grow up with it. A lot of us feel like kids these days don’t have the childhood that we had because we were outside playing, and we came back in when the street lights came on. Now, kids are stuck in the house, stuck behind the screens. There was a line that Peshy Kruger said, “Everything you do, you got to post about it,” but how about just living your life?

PS: Right. That’s one of my favorite lines in the cipher.

RRX: But I also loved the fact that it gave the opportunity for the younger generation to say what they felt because we … really don’t know what it’s like growing up today. The gun violence in our area hits home for me. I lost some friends back in the day, but even in recent years, parents who are friends of mine have lost kids out there in these streets. You recently released a short film, “The Last Shot,” which touches on this issue.

PS: This generation is too quick to just pick up a gun. It’s too easy, you know what I’m saying? The shock factor isn’t even the same no more, it’s become the norm. I got a 16-year-old daughter, I got a 9-year-old son, and I think about them not growing up in this type of environment.

RRX: I watched the entire film just the other day, and that was heavy.

PS: That was a gun prevention project I teamed up with the County. Schenectady County Boys and Girls Club, Schenectady Connect, and Schenectady Youth Bureau actually funded the project. When they first brought it to me, I had the idea already because Eddie’s dad had approached me like three years prior and told me that he wanted to do a documentary on his son (Eddie Stanley Jr). I actually knew Eddie for real. In “The Last Shot,” there are real clips of Eddie going to the basketball hoop, that’s me recording. That was in 2010. I was recording the basketball games for Schenectady High School. And when the County approached me, they said, ”Well, we got these gun prevention funds. What do you wanna do? Do you think there’s something that we could do?” I said, “Yeah, let’s do a short film, but we gotta do something real and relatable to this community.” I don’t wanna bring in something from outside that is like … what does this mean to us? I mean, this happens every day around here. So I thought this was the perfect story. Because Eddie was around the streets, but he wasn’t in the streets, and I think those are two different things. I think that was the difference on why I chose his story for this particular project. I actually used some of the people that were there that night to replay themselves. I pulled the real 911 calls. We pulled the real court documents to see what the judge really said. I really tried to make it my business to make it as real and as close as possible to what happened that night. It was a powerful thing. We packed out the theater, we had over 2,000 people show up to Proctors to come watch the film. Eddie’s dad, Eddie Sr., actually played himself in the film. That was the real father that was in the film.

RRX: That’s something else. God bless them for being able to do that. To take that role on says a lot.

PS: I was inspired. I’m a dad, and I don’t know if I could have played that. I think his biggest thing was he doesn’t want his son’s death to be in vain. He wants the world to know who his son is. He’s been doing stuff even before the film. I mean … barbecues, events in the park, tournaments, all types of stuff he’s done in his son’s name. So this was just another notch in what he was already doing. But I definitely don’t think I could have pulled that off if that was me.

RRX: No, absolutely not. More power to him, though, because it really makes the message more clear.

PS: Yeah, it really does, it was a real powerful film.

For more on Prince Sprauve and his work, visit: quietonsetllc.com

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