On November 8, 2002, two complete strangers came together and smacked the s**t out of the streets! Bronx-native, Craig Davis and Queens-native Smack united to create Smack DVD, which means Streets, Music, Arts, Culture and Knowledge.
Smack DVDs have become one of the hottest commodities on the streets, whether bought, borrowed or bootlegged. Craig, Smack and their publicist Shonte Davis are the creative forces behind all that all-too-real footage seen on the video. Mainstream shows like “Access Hollywood,” “Making of a Video” and “Access Granted” all give behind the scene peeks at artists, but Smack offers a unique perspective. It show rap’s favorite artists in their most authentic and greasiest form – street. No FCC censors and violations to worry about, as Smack allows artists to be real in the purest sense of the word.
“We try to chill with the artists the way a fan would want to chill with the artists,” Craig explains.
With Craig being more of the college type and Smack being the atypical street dude, the pair argued plenty about the concept and direction the series should take, but eventually they just put everything to the side and just did it. Craig relays, “We’ve been doing it ever since.”
The ongoing series has covered the likes of Juelz Santana, Beanie Sigel, 50 Cent, T.I., Xzibit, The Game, David Banner, Fat Joe, Cam’ron, Jim Jones, Peter Gunz, Lil Flip and the list is high-near neverending. Juelz Santana was featured in their first issue, but the “issue” made their street credibility soar was No. 2 with 50 Cent, who was white hot at the time. Smack admits, “[That DVD] made us real credible with the streets because of the raw and explicit footage we had.”
Hip-Hop documentary style DVDs are nothing new, a notion Smack recognizes truthfully. At the same time, he says there are fundamental distinctions.
“We structure differently from others. I mean we two dudes that came up on the streets- that’s where I’m from and that’s what I know, so I know what the average street dude wants to see, smell me? We give the consumer their money’s worth and we go at this hard,” Smack says.
In VIBE magazine’s Juice issue this summer, Smack was featured alongside of AllHipHop.com as one of the top alternate media sources. The accolades are worth is, Smack says, but the alternate course isn’t always the smoothest road.
“The best thing about this job is that I can relate to it. The worse thing is getting up and doing everything your f***ing self. I wouldn’t change it though. We basically are at our own pace, we’re our own bosses, we young black entrepreneurs trying to come up. Everything is done in house, from the camera work, shooting people state to state, to editing – we get out what we put in.” he levels.
Agreeing, Craig adds, “It feels good proving to people that we could do it. There were so many people saying you can’t do your own distribution, you can’t do this or do that. So it’s good to show that we set goals and accomplished them.”
Smack welcomes the non-believers and he’s come to embrace the negativity.
“There are so many talkers and bullsh***ers out there. People saying I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that and they don’t do s**t, so you gotta make people believers,” he barks.
Craig and Smack continue to forge ahead, as they plan setting new goals, production companies and new films.
While the pair represent the streets as thoroughly as they can, wanna-be rappers should pause before approaching the pair, whether through emails to smackdvdmagazine.com or otherwise.
Get your weight up.
“We not just gonna give you a free ride and create buzz for you, nobody got us here for free. We were out there hanging up posters, handing out flyers and DVD’s. We want n***as who are out there grinding,” Smack finishes.