R'Shad: Anime and Music

R’Shad is a phenomenal wordsmith and just a downright amazing individual. We initially met while I was assisting on one of his music videos. We immediately became friends when we started talking about cartoons and anime.

Fast forward 2 years later and he approached me about creating a visual album for his newest release, Bounce ‘N Vibes, with each song having a call back to shows that influenced him as an artist. I definitely carried the same sentiment because I can easily contribute my artistic journey to the shows I grew up on. As soon as he pitched, I was hooked.

This project has been one of my favorite projects and the journey that R’Shad and I took to get there was the best part. We wanted to properly pay homage to the anime he grew up watching, and (the most important) not come off as corny or too on the nose. So we dove into his album and dissected his words and sought after the commonality of his words and the shows we wanted to reference.

The series and genre of anime that we wanted to tackle were the following:

Dragon Ball Series, Naruto Series, Slice-of-Life, and Re:Zero.

We dove deep into these shows and genres and started picking out the small references and easter eggs that we wanted to include in our shoot. From the color of wardrobe, scenery, props, to even the pose. We were more than satisfied with the results of our products, and R’Shad finally got to try some Ramune (right?!).

Here are some of the photos of what they were referencing: