In Chuck Inglish‘s animated new video, premiering exclusively on Billboard, the rapper travels through time, dances with disembodied butts and makes it out alive for the beginning of his solo musical journey.
“This is my start,” the Michigan-born L.A. resident says. “I haven’t really been Chuck Inglish before. I was Chuck Inglish inside of an umbrella with my brother [Sir Michael Rocks], but that wasn’t the final goal.”
In 2016, it’s personal. The former Cool Kid is embracing Evan Ingersoll the man, drawing on past memories and life experiences as heard on his latest LP, Everybody’s Big Brother (released through his label Sounds Like Fun), a completely self-produced effort.
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“My label is called Sounds Like Fun for a reaaon,” he says. “When you use your words wisely and you really believe them, things start taking shape. The company put it on. It says it on the paper ‘Sounds Like Fun Productions.’ I think it’s just gonna set it off and make sure all of it’s fun.”
Even the album title is steeped in significance for Inglish as a result of a musical revelation. “Everybody’s Big Brother came from me having that question with myself of who have I been,” the rapper says. “When I used to listen to old E-40 or MC Breed, all the cool shit, I always felt like they were big brothers … That’s where that concept came from. I felt like that’s what my mission had been up until that point.”
This stronger sense of self manifested into a torrent of inspiration. Beyond EBB, Inglish has two additional albums completed — a collaborative project produced by Blended Babies called Ev Zepplin, and another self-produced solo album dedicated to his late uncle, who died in a tragic truck accident. The latter album is named Lemon Pepper Season Salt after a secret family rub recipe.
“The process of making food and making music are very similar to me,” he says. “To put both together, make a soundtrack of what I heard growing up and name it the one recipe [my uncle] told me not to fucking tell nobody until he died, made sense to me.”
Now, Inglish’s mission is to continue spreading Everybody’s Big Brother to the masses. Here, he debuts the amusingly absurd video to the album’s lead single “Freaknik ‘96,” inspired by a stop in Atlanta his family made while on the road to Disney World just after the ’96 Olympics. The summer before Ingersoll started 7th grade left an indelible impression.
“I was the most musically receptive at that time,” he recalls. “That’s around the time Ghost Town DJ’s “My Boo,” the So So Def All-Stars album … I just don’t think nothing makes girls dance more than that tempo. You can do trap or EDM or big bass shit, but I’m about making girls dance. I had that mission in becoming a producer. That’s not a bad task — to be the person that wants to make girls dance and dance for fun.”
During the filming process, his buddy Paul Tucker showed up with actual footage of Atlanta’s Freaknik 1996 celebration. In the final version, Inglish pours beer on cartoon booties and gets his dance on. Tune in to the cartoonish clip below.