[INTERVIEW] MEEKS + FROST
Responsible for some of the most iconic music videos in London’s new school rap scene, brothers Meeks and Frosty explain how they began directing videos and their plans for the future. This director duo started as blood brothers and their bond shines through their captivating creations. With credits for Pa Salieu and SL, they’re just starting their journey, so get to know them before they hit the big time.
Tell us, who and what are Meeks + Frost?
Frost: We’re directors from London, We do music videos at the moment. We are creative directors in general, we’re going to be doing short films, adverts, documentaries. Anything creative, anything moving image.
Meeks: We’re definitely visual artists, storytellers, we just like to capture my passion for music. Being able to capture visual elements in combination with the audio. I feel like people nowadays need the whole package, you need the visual output to go with it to round it off.
What was your first video together?
Frost: ‘Dem A Lie’’ by Pa Salieu, he was freshly signed to Warner. We did his first video when he was signed and that was our first video as well. It was an interesting experience, we’d only been in the game for like a year and a half officially.
Meeks: I feel like it was more of a pilot for us, it was our first involvement in music videos. We shot a lot of that video ourselves, went up to Coventry, run and gun kind of thing and we learnt a lot. But I’d always call ‘Frontline’ by Pa Salieu our first video, it’s definitely the first one we knew what we were doing; it was like okay cool let’s make this happen.
Frost: ‘Frontline’, we actually put a lot of effort into getting that creatively. ‘Dem A Lie’ was kind of feeling out whether the music game was for us.
What impact did ‘Frontline’ have on your work?
Frost: ‘Frontline’ defo put us on the map.
Meeks: We are very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with such a talented artist so early on, because we were still building our skill set and I feel in some ways he was still building his sound. You’ve got two people who are both passionate about building something and it just seemed to work.
Frost: Big up Pa man.
Do you see differences in your first video compared to your recent videos?
Meeks: ‘Dem A Lie’ was about a year and a half ago, for me I see similarities but I think everything has expanded with the way we used to write our treatments. With the way we used to collaborate with our ideas. , it’s almost like realising what you’re capable of, what you’re doing. You almost start off, maybe we can replicate something like that or produce something like that. As you start to build your portfolio and work on more things, you’re like, “oh I didn’t know we could do that one.” With us, I don’t know if you can really see a vid and think this is their specific style. I think we are still creating our style and you’ll see by the next few videos we are dropping; all of them have themes and all of them are very different. We are still finding our style and equally it’s a never ending thing. When being creative there shouldn’t be any limits. We’re always trying to look for a theme or style that’s a bit out there. Frost: We’re always trying to take inspiration from so many different things; from so many other directors, from music, from art. It may even be things that are not creative, there’s so many things to take inspiration from and put that into your own videos. You basically build your own world. I wouldn’t say we have a style yet, we are defo in our creative stage, still trying to feel it out.
To read the rest of this interview, purchase a copy of our Summer 2021 issue.
Words + Photos: Joseph Clarke
