Two New Haven-born entrepreneurs passed the 100,000-view mark Wednesday — and sparked a national discussion on hip-hop’s portrayal of females — with a break-out video entitled “Walking White Women Through Yale.”
The entrepreneurs, Andre “Dre” Buchanan and Nadir Abdul-Salaam, welcomed the national attention and praise they’ve received this past week. But they said they don’t understand the “hating” some have directed at them over their portrayal of women in the video, which features Buchanan leading three women on leashes crawling through Yale’s campus and other New Haven haunts, including the tailgating at the annual Harvard-Yale football game.
The critics, they argued during an interview at Book Trader Cafe, are missing the video’s point: to riff on Yale and the cocaine trade; and to promote their growing Chapel Street recording and new-media marketing business, Ivy League Studios LLC. (The video appears above, as do portions of an interview with the pair.)
Buchanan: “There was no degrading intent. Like the women danced with us at the end of the video.”
Abdul-Salaam: “And those were not the only women in the video! We had a lot of women in the video.”
Buchanan: “Most of the women in the video weren’t on the leashes. They were giving us hugs, high fives. We were at the Yale-Harvard game … Everything felt good.”
Abdul-Salaam: “It’s just artistic expression. Especially if you listen to the song. You can get your own interpretation.”
Buchanan: “Snoop Dogg did the exact same thing at the VMA.”
Abdul-Salaam: “Parents put leashes on their children.”
Paul Bass Photo
Lots of people have indeed offered their interpretations of the “Walking White Women Through Yale,” which is proving a breakout hit for a duo who opened their business three years ago above Hull’s Art Supply & Framing between York and Park streets.
Buchanan (at left in above photo), a music producer who’s 27 years old, and Abdul-Salaam (at right), a serial entrepreneur who’s 32, originally featured a “no denim” boutique as a mainstay of the business. For a while they also hosted a barbershop and an event space. All along, they also produced videos for people, including music for unsigned rappers and web ads for local businesses. The recording/ production side of the business eventually crowded out the boutique side. (Abdul-Salaam’s brother Acquil, 37, is a third partner.)
All along, asserted Buchanan and Abdul-Salaam, they have made “positivity” a hallmark of their business, including avoiding degrading terms for women (i.e. “bitch” and “ho”).
Buchanan decided to come out in front of the camera to produce a new video that would get the company’s name out. The pair decided the video should use “shock value” to grab attention. Hence the leashes. They advertised and found three women interested in playing the main roles, Buchanan said. They paid the women $20 each per hour, according to Buchanan. He said one is an actress in New York; one an aspiring actress from Hartford; and one a local woman who participated “as a favor.” (He declined to name them.)
“The white girl is a metaphor in the urban society of cocaine,” Buchanan said. They extended the metaphor by playing on “Yale” and “yayo,” a nickname for cocaine.
Instead of selling or snorting cocaine, Buchanan and others in the video hand out and smell Ivy League Studios business cards. Throughout the video, the name of the business appears, along with contact information at the end.
“Instead of selling drugs,” Buchanan said, “we’re selling our business.”
The pair test-ran the video on Aug. 4, on YouTube. They sent the link to friends. It never took off. As of Thursday afternoon, it had received 21,777 views — respectable, hardly a breakout.
Two days later, they posted it on a leading hip-hop site, World Star. Bam—they watched 7,000 viewers click on it in the first hour. The numbers kept climbing. Howard Stern devoted a section of his radio show to it. Calls started coming in for interviews; they so far have had 19 interviews scheduled with stations like WZMX Hot 93.7 and (Thursday morning) the show Star and Bucwild; and with hip-hop websites. MTV Jams called Thursday. Meanwhile, viewers called the contact number on the video to debate the merits with Buchanan. “I get hate messages all day,” he said. Some minds he changed, he said, during conversation.
And a torrid debate began on the World Star site. As of Thursday afternoon, the debate had attracted 1,814 comments. Some called the video out for sexism or racism; more appeared to be supportive — not just of the message, but of the music itself. Not to mention the crew’s considerable video chops.
Sample comments:
• “From an artistic stand point I think the visual is BRILLIANT!! The entire production provokes conversation without actually implicating anything.Great use of contrast! As an Ivy League grad who also happens to be a white male, I didn’t find this to be offensive at all. Good work!”
• “TELL ME I DIDN’T FALL FOR AN UNSIGNED ARTIST TRICK SOLELY OFF THA FACT OF DEGRADING WHITE WOMEN?!”
• “this shit NOT cool, this dosent reflect well on us as a race. and these white women need to get some self respect. Ls all around on this one”
• “As a jewish woman on her way to college as a freshman I think this video is cool. I dig what they are doing. I wouldn’t walk but I do have friends that love doing stuff like this. I guess the suburbs are being exposed. Yale=Yayo=HILARIOUS. Why all the racist comments?”
Monetizing
Buchanan: “We’re big fans of Yale.”
So how does all that attention translate into dollars?
By attracting new customers. Buchanan and Abdul-Salaam said that, through “Walking White Women,” musicians have already contacted them to produce recordings or videos for or with them.
“Most guys who go viral, they’re artists,” Buchanan said. “We’re a business. We have a service.”
The video, they said, is “an ad.” However much people might disagree on the video’s portrayal of women, there’s no disagreement that the studio succeeded in getting its name out.
“We do shock value. We sat down and said, ‘What could create a conversation?’”
No debating that they succeeded on that score, as well.
Abdul-Salaam: “This is the most attention the city has ever gotten outside of Yale!”
Buchanan: “We’re big fans of Yale. We want to pop Yale. We want to make them very popular.”
Abdul Salaam: “It’s all art.”
How absolutely degrading to European American women and racist to European Americans in general!
Can you imagine the outrage of a European American man walking an African American woman on a leash while he intimates that she is his slave, who has to do cocaine in his navel in order to get it?
What a sick power trip this video conveys while glamorizing the use of cocaine and the sadistic power that some black drug dealers seek over white girls, even rich educated ones, who just need help to stop using drugs.
Why do you feel the need to have even elite white girls to be your slaves? I see absolutely no art here.
Timothy G. O'Rourke Jr.
The Hill