HOODZ Jay williams
and his girlfriend were murdered.
OZONE caught up with Hoodz founder Jay Williams to share his story on how Hoodz was created and managed to live through the oversaturation of Hip Hop DVD Magazines.
That’s quite a setback. What did you do next? I was still in the streets and a friend of mine who just got out was asking me about the movie business and telling me to leave the BS alone. So I started some businesses and got some real estate investments. Then I started working on my project Urban Stalemate and a feature film called Group Therapy where we put a bunch of people from different walks of life in the same room. We shot it in 2001-02. The idea for Hoodz came up in the production of that movie. I was trying to think of an idea that I could show what all was going on in different ‘hoods across America. I wanted to break the “just us” stereotype Black people have thinking that they the only one with problems. So I started going to different ‘hoods, getting my pass and going in with cameras. Within a couple days of Group Therapy 9/11 hit and that obviously brought a lot of things to a halt.
How did the Hoodz concept start? The whole concept came for me being in prison in the early 90s. Being in jail most niggas want to be rappers or rob rappers when they get out. I always wanted get out and make movies. My father has been involved in TV since the 1950s. He used to show it to me, but I didn’t like it at the time. It wasn’t until jail that I liked it. I got out in 1996 and started going to seminars and doing research. I shot my first short film in 1998. Right around that time, I got shot and shortly thereafter, my partner
But one night, my partner was doing a show with Cash Money and we did interview with Mannie Fresh, Baby and them. I didn’t know what I was gonna do with the footage yet. But there weren’t any other companies around at the time. No SMACK, no nothing. Not too long after that, Jam Master Jay was in town, I wasn’t too excited to do the interview, but I didn’t know he was gonna die a week later. So we had the last living interview of JMJ. As soon as we did that, we started hearing about all these other DVDs popping up. All that
When the DVD Magazine format became popular in the early 2000s, its quick ascension seemingly came from out of nowhere. Unfortunately, similar to its audio cousin, the mixtape, the rapid growth eventually lead to an oversaturated market. So saturated that the genre’s creator, Hoodz DVD Magazine, took a two year hiatus to let their competitors eventually fizzle out and open the door for them to return with quality product.
stuff was looking like it came off the cutting room floor of BET, it had no substance. It was rappers smoking weed and flashing guns. SMACK was coming out with DVDs every month and that shit was selling. It felt like we had the purp, but everybody on the block was buying regular. So it took two years for us to do it again. Why two years? Niggas on the team wasn’t really about it and I saw the importance of making a brand and making relationships. Early on I could see the industry was gonna be saturated with bullshit. I wanted to survive it for the long haul. So while niggas was putting out garbage back-to-back, we were creating better business situations. How did that decision pay off? From our first DVD people ran with what we did. We had Hip Hop, street shit and dope fiends. After that SMACK ran with the Hip Hop aspect, then Hood to Hood came out with the hood element of what we was doing. Everybody took a piece of what we wanted to do. I’m not mad, but they did it fucked up. So us not coming out for a minute was really agood thing. We got a good sense of where the market was going. What impact would you say Hoodz has had on the ‘hood and the industry? It gave the hood a voice. We go to places that no one else goes. We’ve been to the roughest parts of LA and to Charleston, SC. Those are the craziest places I’ve been. We’ve gone to Camden, NJ, that’s like 3-by-5 miles of death. But I figured, I did the same bullshit a lot these guys are doing, back in the day. Why not go back and do something positive. Words by Maurice G. Garland // Photo by Tyson Horne.
96 // OZONE MAG