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We Need A President (It’s Obama!)

The Beginning
After the success of the Revolution music video, an Oakland-based non-profit contacted Trevor to work on a series of music videos for a project centered around hip hop and civic engagement. Trevor agreed to work on the project, but only if the Napalm Clique could have a song featured on the compilation album. Trevor discussed the project with Unity and a week later, he, Tai Chi, and F.L.O. had written and recorded We Need A President. However, when they presented the song to the non-profit, it was turned down because the project had to be non-partisan. Trevor liked the song so much that he suggested that they just make a video for the song anyway, instead of releasing it through the non-profit.

The Song
While creating the song, Unity made sure to research the current state of Obama’s campaign to fuel his lyrical content. As a result, almost every line of Unity’s first verse is grounded in Obama’s own words and sentiments, often times quoting him verbatim.

The beat was created by Tai Chi, who also has the second verse in the song. Tai Chi wanted to create something that sounded like a regal victory song, similar to a marching band. The last line of Tai Chi’s verse even states, “That’s why we’re jamming with the band for Barack like he already won!”

The third verse tied the whole song together as F.L.O. self-identifies with Obama making humorous references to the fact that the Bush era is finally over. He concludes with a positive message, stating that none of this is about race or specific candidates, but just the simple idea of “voting for change”.

The Video
The video itself was as described in the Oakland Tribune as, “a multimedia celebration of the political candidate”, and there was definitely a variety of mixed media throughout. Unity’s verse had referenced a number of points from the A More Perfect Union speech, so Trevor thought it would be a good idea to include soundbytes and video clips from the speech itself while also mimicking the exact look of the speech for each verse. To achieve this, he would have to shoot each MC on green screen.

From there, everything else was shot on green screen. Trevor wanted to have maximum flexibility in terms of integrating other media and found footage into the video. The goal was to elucidate as many ideas in the lyrics as possible.

The real trick though was elucidating the vocal harmony of the chorus. The fact that chorus emphasizes the word, “We”, so frequently gave Trevor the idea of incorporating other non-rappers into the video to represent the sentiments of ordinary everyday people. To achieve this, he had 40+ people stand in front of a green screen, one at a time, to sing the chorus. None of these people had heard the song before, but it made their performances even more genuine.

After shooting all of these people on green screen, the hardest part began; the editing. Trevor had only conceptualized about a third of the visuals by this time, but in four weeks he was able to produce the remaining visual elements and release the video.

The Impact
The video was released on YouTube on August 21st 2008, and received almost 1,000 views just within its first day. By August 24th, it was in the Oakland Tribune, and on August 25th it appeared on the KTVU 2 Morning News.

Trevor brought dozens of copies to the Democratic National Convention, and even had a chance to personally hand one to Oprah Winfrey.

The video was toured at local schools throughout the summer and fall, and by late October kids all over Oakland were singing the chorus and convincing their parents and eligible friends to vote for Obama.

In November, the video won Best Video at the Vote Hip Hop Awards, juried by Talib Kweli and a number of prominent Bay Area artists and activists. Since then, We Need A President has continued to receive views and comments on YouTube.