Marcella Ortega
Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: Culture
Original Article Found Here
From Daily Lobo
For Janale Harris, the music business is not all fun and games.
“You turn on MTV, you turn on BET and you see all these shows,” he said. “It’s no disrespect to any of these shows, because there’s a market for it, and that’s what happens. But you have a whole generation of aspiring artists that come up and think that that’s the business, and it’s not the business. The business is sometimes you got to sleep two hours a day. Sometimes, you’re going to sleep on somebody’s floor. Sometimes, you’re going to wake up, and you’re going to hustle.”
Harris, who’s known as the hip-hop artist Quanstar, will release “Do It!: A Documentary” on Friday. The film will be played at The Stove on Saturday as part of the Hip-Hop Film Festival presented by New Mexico Hip-Hop Congress.
The documentary follows Harris for six months. Throughout the film, he works two jobs, records the soundtrack to the documentary and goes on his annual “Bring Your ‘A’ Game Tour.”
“It’s really like an honest-to-God look at my life,” he said. “It deals a lot with me having two jobs. It talks about me being a father. There is a huge segment on me and my son, and it happens around his birthday, and my family flies out. We interview my mother, my sister and my son’s mother. It has us going on tour.”
Harris said the documentary doesn’t just capture the good part of the six months.
“There’s no glamour to it,” he said. “There are things that go wrong. My house got foreclosed during this movie. So, this is the real deal.”
Harris said he had to learn different approaches to making money in the music business.
“I’ve been in the game professionally since 2001,” he said. “But all my life, people at school or something like that. I’d walk around with, like, $50 and battle somebody for 50. That’s how I’d pay rent a long time ago.”
Harris said making a documentary along with an album gives the audience a visual effect.
“They get to see even more in-depth what we talk about our experience is,” he said. “It gives them a more personal effect of who Quanstar is. Quanstar is a real dude. Quanstar is a person that wakes up and has to go through the things that everyone else does and sometimes doesn’t get as much out of it as someone might in their everyday job. But I get up. I work. I come home just like everybody else.”
Harris he would like to make more documentaries like “Do It!”
“We live in a multimedia society, and I think it’s a natural progression for all media to go towards mixed media,” he said. “Pretty much every album that I drop from now on will be paired with a documentary.”
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do whatever it took to make it happen?
DO IT!: A DOCUMENTARY is a real life account filmed over the course of six entertaining months, following independent hip hop icon Quanstar through his day to day journey toward his ultimate goal of achievement for himself not only as a performer and an artist, but as a father and a man. It takes on a very personal effect, filmed intimately and independently not only by the film’s co-producer but, at times, by Quanstar himself.
He welcomes his audience into his grueling everyday experience as he balances the many aspects that come with the career path he has chosen. He single handedly runs his record label out of a tiny bedroom in his father ’s house, juggles two part-time jobs, shares joint custody of his toddler son - even as it means propping the boy on his shoulder as he performs at a local Summer benefit - and constantly works to raise funds by sponsorships and promotions in order to fund and drive his music career. You‘ll even follow him on his annual nationwide tour -“The Bring You’re ’A’ Game Tour”- during which just about everything that can go wrong goes wrong, and he is forced to adapt, adjust, and reinvent as he goes. Which he does, with incredible charisma and determination.
He’s a man who goes against the grain and is driven by nothing else than his own inner desire to be the best he can be in every way imaginable. He is supported by a strong cast of family and friends who all play roles in the film, including candid commentary by a select few closest to him. His relationship with his son shines throughout as an elemental and forceful factor in all he does. It becomes evident that while for many simply having a child in and of itself becomes the ultimate obstacle in pursuing their dreams, in Quanstar ’s case, it is the ultimate driving force. He will stop at nothing to prove to his son that dreams should never be given up, roadblocks should never mean the end, and goals should always be achieved no matter what it takes.
“Do It” is the best kind of film; spoken from the heart. Quanstar speaks to the camera as if you are right in front of him and bears his innermost thoughts in order to bring to light the true magnitude of what it means to be an independent artist in the thick of everything else his life entails. The film has appeal, not only because of its dynamic star, but because of the common thread in all of us that it speaks to. The dream we all search for, the obstacles we all face, and the inner motivation we all have somewhere inside of us to be not only where, but who, we want to be.
The film’s DVD is paired with a 12 song soundtrack featuring Quanstar and Atlanta based producer extra ordinaire, GM, with guest tracks done by Cypher Linguistics of Dropbombz.com and Lena Moon. Stand out songs like In The City, Drunkenman’s Prayer featuring jazz diva Chanel Mosley, and Back In The Day set the soundtracks tone to ensure listeners the finest ear candy available.
The "Do It!: A Documentary" deluxe set can be currently purchased at LULU.com, Quanstar's myspace (www.myspace.com/quanstar) and facebook (www.facebook.com/quanstar) pages, and many other online and mom and pop retailers. Also, the movie is availableas downloads in mpeg 4 and windows media files.
RUNTIME: 85 MINUTES
He welcomes his audience into his grueling everyday experience as he balances the many aspects that come with the career path he has chosen. He single handedly runs his record label out of a tiny bedroom in his father ’s house, juggles two part-time jobs, shares joint custody of his toddler son - even as it means propping the boy on his shoulder as he performs at a local Summer benefit - and constantly works to raise funds by sponsorships and promotions in order to fund and drive his music career. You‘ll even follow him on his annual nationwide tour -“The Bring You’re ’A’ Game Tour”- during which just about everything that can go wrong goes wrong, and he is forced to adapt, adjust, and reinvent as he goes. Which he does, with incredible charisma and determination.
He’s a man who goes against the grain and is driven by nothing else than his own inner desire to be the best he can be in every way imaginable. He is supported by a strong cast of family and friends who all play roles in the film, including candid commentary by a select few closest to him. His relationship with his son shines throughout as an elemental and forceful factor in all he does. It becomes evident that while for many simply having a child in and of itself becomes the ultimate obstacle in pursuing their dreams, in Quanstar ’s case, it is the ultimate driving force. He will stop at nothing to prove to his son that dreams should never be given up, roadblocks should never mean the end, and goals should always be achieved no matter what it takes.
“Do It” is the best kind of film; spoken from the heart. Quanstar speaks to the camera as if you are right in front of him and bears his innermost thoughts in order to bring to light the true magnitude of what it means to be an independent artist in the thick of everything else his life entails. The film has appeal, not only because of its dynamic star, but because of the common thread in all of us that it speaks to. The dream we all search for, the obstacles we all face, and the inner motivation we all have somewhere inside of us to be not only where, but who, we want to be.
The film’s DVD is paired with a 12 song soundtrack featuring Quanstar and Atlanta based producer extra ordinaire, GM, with guest tracks done by Cypher Linguistics of Dropbombz.com and Lena Moon. Stand out songs like In The City, Drunkenman’s Prayer featuring jazz diva Chanel Mosley, and Back In The Day set the soundtracks tone to ensure listeners the finest ear candy available.
The "Do It!: A Documentary" deluxe set can be currently purchased at LULU.com, Quanstar's myspace (www.myspace.com/quanstar) and facebook (www.facebook.com/quanstar) pages, and many other online and mom and pop retailers. Also, the movie is availableas downloads in mpeg 4 and windows media files.
RUNTIME: 85 MINUTES
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