If you haven't listened to J. Cole's KOD album yet, you're probably not a huge fan of Cole to begin with. There's nothing wrong with that, but even so, you should check out the J. Cole co-directed video for his song "Kevin's Heart," if only because it has some major star power in the form of actor and comedian Kevin Hart.
Vulture magazine published an interview with Scott Lazer, Cole's long time video man and co-director for several of his videos. In the interview, Lazer breaks down Cole's process for video directing, and how they managed to find a suitable inspiration in Kevin Hart.
Lazer says that he knew Cole was passionate about film making when they were editing his video for "Apparently," off 2014 Forest Hill Drive, as he took a hands on approach with the post-production editing of the video. Lazer even claims that he gained a lot of visual inspiration from Cole.
"He is a visual artist and I’ve gained filmmaking insight from him. People have told me one of my signatures is really long shots and I totally got that from him," said Lazer. "Because we were cutting “Apparently” and I had this really cutty version and he was like, Let the shots play, man; they’re great shots, just let ’em play. He said: You should trust your shots. I was like: Trust your shots? You’re a rapper, bro. But it was pretty eye-opening."
As for Kevin, he was interested from the beginning. "From the moment I saw him he was just, like, down," said Lazer. "And we had a call with him a few days before and I walked him through the whole treatment and he was laughing the whole time; it’s a funny video."
Check out the whole interview for more insights into J. Cole's film making process.