Versace Cover Spreads City High Pride

Gaggles of freshmen fall silent as Omar Shaban ‘14 struts down the main hall minutes after the release of “City (Versace Cover)” on January 13th. Internet connection slowed as the YouTube music video spreading “City High Swag” gained over 900 views on the first day of public viewing from not only Little Hawks but teachers, alumni, and even Trojans.

City High and West High have made videos in the past, successful as well as not. Social media has been tense across the river and projects like this are often pointed towards each other, aggravating our rivals. However, this video was made in good spirits with little fun poked at West High.

“Even my little sister’s friends were talking about it before an hour had passed,” who filmed and edited the video, said.  “She didn’t even know I was making it.”

Shaban heard the rapper Drake’s song, Versace, over the summer and immediately thought it had a great beat to rap.  He started improvising with some lyrics and hand-picked his team. Kole Butler’s ‘14 experience made him perfect to compose a verse of lyrics.

“All of Kole’s beats are sick so I asked him to write a verse and it turned out great,” Shaban said.

Shahkem Badgett ‘14 and Adam Nicholson ‘15 both agreed to be in the film as soon as Shaban explained his vision of City High pride. Pajunen heard about the idea and offered to film and edit the video to gain more experience.  The team brainstormed and collaborated ideas in the beginning of the August.
“We filmed for around two and half days because it was our first video,” Pajunen said.  “It took me another twelve hours to edit it and I put it off until the last second, but it turned out great.”

Pajunen had many ideas for different shots in the video but ran out of time.  Various locations on and off-campus were used including the front lawn, in front of the press box, the soccer field, classrooms, the reservoir, and Pancheros.

“If we could do the action to the words we were saying, we’d try to do it,” Nicholson said. “There were some things we couldn’t do but we managed to get an Audi up on the front lawn so, whatever works.”

The video has gotten very positive feedback so far.  Due to Twitter’s 73 retweets and 111 favorites, the clip spread like wildfire.  The completed project was successful in Shaban’s eyes.

“Our main goal was to spread City High spirit,” Shaban said.  “It was really fun to do and we hope to do something similar to it soon.”

The boys were concerned about crossing lines in the video, so they went to Mr. Bacon at the beginning of the school year and talked about the things they were worried about. One particularly controversial line was “Tryna go on a date with Ms. Audi” but she gave permission.

“We knew that we needed to get permission from the teachers to use their specific names in the video, but Mr. Bacon was really cool with everything else so shouts out to him,” Shaban said.

City High faculty including Mr. Lehman, Mrs. Fields, and Chip Hardesty made appearances in the collaboration. They were very flexible and enthusiastic in being selected to be a part of the project.

“Mr. Bacon said as long as we didn’t do anything stupid or get in any trouble that he was all for the idea,” Butler said.

The group gained experience and confidence in themselves through the project.  Creating the video was a different way to express themselves compared to a pep assembly or announcement on the intercom.

“Every time you do a big project like that, you get more experience,” Pajunen said.  “We just want everyone to know that City High can do things like this.”