"Who this? Who this?" It's Young Nut and he's not stopping. ASU's very own film-making practices sophomore Cameron Krafft — the aspiring "Michael Cera of the rap game" — is working hard to advance his rap career with first full-length album, "Season2," which he released Dec. 1.
The album, which opens with a track titled "Who This," already has 300,000 listens on Spotify, with an accompanying music video for the song "I Don't Eat Ass" that has reached 15,000 views on YouTube thus far.
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The positive response to his new work motivates him to keeping writing more music and releasing new songs. Krafft said he's serious about his music and is considering pursuing a career as a rapper after college.
“I became really passionate about it when I started working on my album and I realized it's the coolest form of content that I can create and that I am proud of,” Krafft said.
Krafft created and released his first mixtape, which was released in mid-2017, in two days and was taken aback by the sudden popularity of some of the songs. He decided to take more time to focus on the quality of "Season2" so he could be as proud of the content he was putting out into the world as possible.
“With this album, I had actual producers and sound engineers so the writing process generally stayed the same, but the development of it was taken a lot more seriously because I wanted it to be as legitimate as possible,” Krafft said.
Krafft's music is influenced by rappers like Ugly God and Lil Dicky, whom he hopes to perform with sometime this year, but he also finds inspiration from his day-to-day life.
“My mindset is that every rapper raps about their lifestyle and my lifestyle is telling dumb jokes and being stupid so I decided to go with that,” Krafft said.
Ever since his first week at ASU, Daniel Weekes, a freshman economics major who hopes to work in the music industry someday, has been a fan of Young Nut and his music.
“I thought he was just a funny ASU student,” Weekes said. “I didn’t realize he had a whole rap career on the internet ... Young Nut went from a funny school favorite to having the ability to pursue this as a career both in college and after graduation.”
Freshman filmmaking major Ryan Moreno has been directing music videos under the name rmo for almost two years and has been making other content for even longer. Moreno found interest in Krafft’s music and offered to direct Young Nut’s first music video for the song “I Don’t Eat Ass.”
Moreno said that both he and Krafft's ambitious ideas for the music video and passion for the material made the collaboration successful.
Moreno said music videos should be "just a fun thing to do that's also driven and full of motivation."
There was even a moment when Moreno was hanging from the hatchback of a car a couple feet from the ground in order to get a low angle of Krafft skateboarding for the slow-motion money–throwing scene. Moreno also said he was especially proud of the bathtub money scene they filmed at Krafft's parents house.
“When he had this crazy idea, that's when I knew that he was super serious about it and that he is also going to have a lot of fun with it and not totally rely on me, but that he was going to put in work too,” Moreno said.
Preparation for the music video took a month while the filming process took only three days. Krafft had tried to make a music video for the song using his phone camera the summer prior, but he was never really proud of it. He said he was excited to get the chance to create a more professional looking video for the song.
Part of Young Nut's appeal is that his audience can relate to him.
“Young Nut is angry, hilarious, authentic and just like the rest of us,” Weekes said. “When you watch Young Nut's video for ‘I Don't Eat Ass’ he jokingly throws around fake hundred dollar bills and skates around his suburban Arizona neighborhood. This is clearly a sign of him both embracing the stereotypes of rap culture – the clothes, money and cars, but also showing that he does not actually have it. By embodying the stereotypes of hip-hop culture to such an extreme, he has shown us he does not pretend to be something he is not.”
In 2018, Krafft is planning on releasing one new song per month starting in February. He is also planning to film another music video, this one for the opening track on "Season2" titled “Who This.”
Krafft's success also comes from his ability to create a personal brand, Moreno said.
“He's very good at branding himself and all his music, all his profiles, and all his social media,” he said. “When you see Young Nut you immediately think of this funny, quirky weird kid but it's super cool to see that he's established that role for himself.”
Reach the reporter at jlmyer10@asu.edu or follow @jessiemy94 on Twitter.
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