Shot entirely on an iPhone 6, Cazwell’s music video for “¡Spicy!”, the latest track from his Hard 2 B Fresh album, is fun and psychedelic with lots of bright colors and playful visuals. It mixes Mexican and Catholic imagery into a gay version of outer space filled with porn stars and rainbow burritos with transsexual icon Amanda Lepore sitting on the moon. “Its not your typical music video about a cute Latin boy,” the artist concedes. But not much about Cazwell is typical. Where most gay men with a predilection for hombres focus on the size of the Latino penis, Cazwell’s interests lean to the rear. “I definitely have an ass fetish”, he admits, adding, “I think it’s time Hip Hop paid homage to the guys’ culo.” Cazwell’s “¡Spicy! ” is available on iTunes now.
“I was seeing a guy that was very spicy,” continues Cazwell, discussing the inspiration for the song. “He was passionate with a capital P: extremely loving and affectionate and great in bed. But passion has its negative side too. He was very jealous and quick to snap.” Cazwell explains his songs’ intentions further, “Being ‘spicy’ certainly is not limited to just one race or ethnicity. A lot of it just has to do with your own personal swag, how you carry yourself and how you communicate with your bae.”
After writing the lyrics for the song with frequent collaborator Big Dipper, Cazwell worked with Denver-based producer Craig C. on the beat and called in his favorite side chick, Cherie Lily to lace the hook. They wanted Pitbull meets MIA with heavy Latin inspired percussion and horns. “I needed this to be the song on my album that spiced shit up,” Cazwell says. He also wanted to do something a little different and experimental with the song’s music video. He brought in 19-year-old Bob Bottle, a video director he worked with previously on the music video for “Downtown”.
“A lot of the times when I do a video, I’ll shoot in a day and then hand off the footage to the director to edit. I wanted Bob on this video because we’re friends. We communicate daily. I wanted the video to be a true collaboration.”
Bottle and Cazwell share an interest in images, animations, designs, and videos that live in their own universe of highly saturated color, homoerotic imagery, and sparkling galaxy textures. These images were the main inspiration for the “Spicy” music video.
“The visuals were all composed as still photo collages and then set into motion around the video footage, a method which prior to this video I had only used for 15 second animations on Instagram,” explains Bob Bottle. “Expanding this process into a full scale music video was a challenge, but it resulted in consistently potent visuals throughout the whole video.”
Cazwell continues, “We created the artwork ahead of shooting the video and went through about 3 completely different “looks” for the video that were inspired by imagery from classic videos games and glitch art before we decided to create a video that was an extension of the art Bob was already making.”
To get the effect of amateur rawness, they decided to shoot the entire video against a green screen, using the camera of an iPhone 6. “We shot the whole thing in my living room,” reveals Cazwell.
A Massachusetts native, Cazwell has been described as what would have happened if Eminem had grown up on Madonna’s front lawn. He has over 10 million You Tube / VEVO views for such tentpole videos as ‘Ice Cream Truck’ , “I Seen Beyoncé At Burger King’, ‘Get My Money Back,’ ‘No Selfie Control’ and “Rice & Beans’.
Late last year, Cazwell released his first full-length album in four years, “Hard 2 B Fresh” on the Brooklyn indie, Peace Bisquit. The batch of jams features seventeen tracks including “Helen Keller”, “Dance Like You Got Good Credit”, “The Biscuit” and “Don’t Get It Twisted.” The week of release, the album went top 5 on iTunes.
For more information, visit Cazwell.com and PeaceBisquit.com.
Exclusive “¡Spicy!“ Tumblr here: http://cazwellspicy.tumblr.
