Catch up on Alex Ford’s parody rap videos

Alex Ford is more than just a junior defensive back for the football team- he’s a film producer, a civil rights activist, a rapper, a BAC dancer, a Facebook celebrity and a fashion aficionado.

His inventive brand of hip-hop parody transforms gritty gangsta raps into hysterically innocent stories about the innocuous occurrences of everyday life. He turned Drake’s “Jumpman” into “Trumpman”, Bobby Shmurda’s “Hot N*gga” into “Hot Snicka” (yes, the like the candy bar), and Young Thug’s “Lifestyle” into “White Smile”– an ode to responsible dental hygiene. The LA native has one of the most creative minds on campus- and probably the most swag, too.

We sat down with Alex to learn more about his style, his insights on social justice, and his aspirations as a filmmaker. At the very least, we guarantee you’ll learn a few things from his interview. But there’s also a good chance you’ll spend the next two hours glued to his YouTube channel instead of studying for midterms. Fair warning.

How’s football season going?

These past two weeks we’ve lost, but we’re just going to work hard and we should get a W on Saturday.

You get a ton of likes on all your profile pictures. What does fashion mean to you?

I’m pretty into fashion. I probably have more clothes than most girls. Also being in LA, you see a lot of different fashions, and my friends are into fusion back home, so we always keep up with each other in a clothing sense. I have a lot of shoes, probably too many. I like to look nice. It’s fun.

And how did you get into making films?

I’ve had a YouTube channel since the summer before my junior year of high school, and I really got into it. When Snapchat came out and was a big thing, I’d do a quick scene, verbally, as if I was some character in some made-up film, with the movie score in the background, and I’d just make it some super-epic Snapchat story for no reason. People liked it, and they were like, you should do some skits or something.

What’s your favorite rap parody that you’ve done?

I really liked “Allergies.” I did that one at the very beginning of summer, when my friend. It’s a remix to the song “Energy” by Drake, and the way the song goes just works with the word ‘allergies,’ and that’s where the song starts getting created.

Your spoken word poem “Take a Shower” is more serious than your raps. How did you get into poetry?

From doing the parodies, I just naturally rhyme things together, not necessarily in a serious sense. There will be times when I feel strongly about something, and I just start writing about it, and then it can come out in a poetic form. The “Take a Shower” spoken word poem that I did just happened out of nowhere. I just wanted to express something different than I usually put on my Youtube channel, to show that I’m not just one-dimensional.

You also made a very powerful film about the campus protests against radicalized police violence last year. What inspired you to do that?

Obviously, being a black male in America, you have a lot to worry about. You might go out tomorrow and get killed by the cops, and you won’t know why. That’s just the way our society is – it doesn’t protect us. In my case, I’ve been stopped by the cops probably five times back home, for no reason. There was one time I was making a video and got cornered by two cop cars. They told me I was filming houses to plan a robbery. It’s things like that, when you don’t know if that’s going to be the last time you’re alive.

When we had the protests here, I had my camera, and I knew I had to film it. The protest was moving me to do something from my perspective, so throughout that day, I wrote down my thoughts on what was going on, and then I turned it into a letter to America – how I’d like to see it change for the better.

What was the reaction to your ‘Dear America’ video?

It ended up kind of semi-blowing up – it got shared by a lot of black celebrities on Twitter, and then it ended up getting picked up by a black enterprise, so they did an article on me and then put it on TV, and it’s been re-run on television like five times, which is pretty cool. I’ve had people reach out to me and say that they appreciate the message. I think that’s kind of the start of how it has to be done – you need to hit a platform where you can reach out to a lot of people.

What was the general student body reaction to the protests on campus?

I think a lot of people on campus were supportive, but there were a lot of people who didn’t participate. In the video I mention there were a lot of people sitting around and not doing anything in here [Frist], when the die-in was happening inside. I’m not saying everyone has to participate – but it could have been a learning experience for everybody.

Has anything changed since the protests last year?

There’s been an increase in awareness and understanding among people. Obviously, it’s not enough, because it’s happened again. But I think we’re moving slowly but surely in a positive direction.

You’ve said that you want to go into the film business after graduation. What sort of movies are you hoping to direct one day?

I like movies that make your mind wander and make you think. Movies that touch on ideas that aren’t necessarily tangible. For example, Christopher Nolan’s a director I really enjoy – In Interstellar, everything’s scientifically possible, but once they go into the blackhole, nobody knows what’s in a black hole, so that’s where the artistic license comes in. If you think about his movie Inception, it’s about dreams, so you can’t give a concrete definition of how dreams work, so there’s so much room for artistic license. I like topics like that.

Right now, I have like five movie plots written, like feature-films, that I plan to make when I’m successful enough to make them. For you to have a big movie, you need a lot of funding. The thing about that industry is you never know when your break is, so if you’ve got something ready to go, then… I don’t expect to get to make those films that I have plot summaries for for at least ten years or so. But in that time, I know I have full ability to create something wonderful.