Behind the Music: Lyrical Miracle
By Blake Rittenberg
No autographs. Please! Absolutely NO autographs. Not a day goes by when an adoring fan doesn’t ask me what life is really like waking up every morning as the Lyrical Miracle. Before I divulge the juicy details of my rap career and gangster lifestyle, let’s get one thing straight—making rap videos for credit unions is by far the most thug-life, p-i-m-p musical endeavor a ghetto wordsmith like myself could ever possibly undertake…
Snapping quickly back into reality, if you’ve seen the TLFCU “Dollars in Your Home” video, it’s quite clear that I am probably pretty close to being the polar opposite of everything aforementioned. This sort of “oxymoron,” if you will, is actually the secret to the video’s humorous success.
It all started at one of our weekly Pod meetings, sitting around in the Melting Pod, tossing around ideas to promote TLFCU’s “Dollars in Your Home” campaign (For those that are unfamiliar with our Pod-Puns, the Melting Pod is just the conference room). When my co-rapper, Daniel Gonzalez, going by the alias DJ-DG, quirked up with a somewhat absurd idea…a rap song. At first, none of us took him too seriously, but once we got into actually writing it, it dawned on us that we had landed on a gold mine.
The lyrics were the easy part—well, I am the Lyrical Miracle after all. The real trouble was putting the song into production. Working on a break the bank, six-figure budget of zero dollars, our team had to do everything from the music, to recording and video production. Laying down the track was our first step in the process. Production Manager, Kristen, and I sat in a small room in the office with nothing more than a hammer, two screwdrivers, a wrench, and a paint roller. As she held up her six-inch sound recorder, I was forced to get creative and loop some beats on the spot with nothing more than a metronome click obnoxiously playing in my ear.
We pulled into the parking lot of TLFCU’s Capital Circle branch, all in high spirits and feeling pretty gangster, if I do say so myself. Upon the doors closing for the day, we immediately began filming the opening shots—since we were working with only an hour and a half time frame. Five hours later and the sun subtly peering over the horizon, the shoot was finally finished with a bit of fuss from our extras because they “didn’t know how to dance,” being the only (somewhat hysterical) issue. Not to mention we went over our time limit by about three and a half hours.
The “Dollars in Your Home” video was absolutely one of the most fun projects I have ever had the pleasure to work on. Let’s be honest, how often do you get a whole $15 in singles to “make it rain” behind the counter of a credit union? Though the real question that everybody is dying to know is, what’s in store for the Lyrical Miracle now? A new music video? Maybe. An album? Possibly. More exciting and engaging content from The Pod? Indefinitely.