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My Last DMX Hip Hop Radio Commercial

About Voice Over, audio, Black Sounding Voiceover, Demos, Radio Imaging, Uncategorized, Vlogging, voiceover, Voiceover Career

Click here to listen to my last DMX Hip Hop Radio Commercial

DMX Hip Hop Radio Commercial

Hip Hop was crushed recently when a giant laid to rest. I remember when DMX introduced himself to the world. The hip hop world was looking for a new set of heroes after the death of Tupac followed by Biggie. Ja Rule was rising. Jay-Z seemed to be the front runner. And Nas was still a serious contender. There were a lot of rappers, especially coming from my hometown of New York, who were all great acts but all seemed to have a hint of the same element. Even Jigga used a similar formula as his late Bed Stuy friend Christopher Wallace.

A New Urban/ Hip Hop Voice

But someone else came out of hip hop. Earl Simmons aka DMX. I wondered many things when he first debuted. “Who is this guy?” “Where did he get his style and his energy?” And that voice? Wow! That grimy hip hop texture to this voice. I was used to the melodic storyteller flow of so many east coast rappers but this guy was something different. He was a guy from NY but he was like from his own planet in New York. He had this raw edge.

At first, while I was captured by his presence, I thought his style was a gimmick. So many people had tried different rap styles to set themselves apart from the pack, but ultimately failed. In my naivete, I thought that you had to be Jay, Nas or BIG to make it in music. But he was neither. And he wasn’t a gimmick. He told a story but he told it in a different way because he was telling his story and not someone else’s. He was telling Dark Man X’s story.

I didn’t get it at first because I wasn’t living that story. But it caught on with me when he released “And Then there was X”. It was his second album with songs that made me “Lose My Mind Up In Here, Up In Here.” His single “Party Up” was a raw kind of chant that was the perfect song to get rowdy and dance to in the club. I remember throwing my body at other clubbers who threw theirs back at me and we celebrated life and freedom to this song. I was in my 3rd year of college then. Then he came back with “X Gone Give It to You” with more of the same. But the song over the years that really got me being a fan of X’s music was “What These Bitches Want”

Everyone Had A Favorite DMX Song Or Line

I would’ve been canceled in 2021 for admitting that I was a huge fan of his misogynistic collaboration with Sisqo. But I played the song over and over, comparing the list of women that DMX named with those who I had personally had a history with.

” There was Brenda, LaTisha (uh), Linda, Felicia (okay)
Dawn, LeShaun, Ines, and Alicia (ooh)
Theresa, Monica, Sharron, Nicki (uh-huh)
Lisa, Veronica, Karen, Vicky (damn)
Cookies, well I met her in a ice cream parlor (aight?)
Tonya, Dianne, Lori and Carla (okay)
Marina (uh) Selena (uh) Katrina (uh) Sabrina (uh)
About three Kim’s (what?) Latoya, and Tina (woo)
Shelley, Bridget, Cathy, Rasheeda (uh-huh)
Kelly, Nicole, Angel, Juanita (damn)
Stacy, Tracy, Rohna, and Ronda (what?)
Donna, Yolanda (what?) Tawana, and Wanda (what?)”

But my favorite line that X raps about in his experiences dealing with the opposite sex is one so many men relate to. He says ” I think about when a dawg didn’t have. And a dawg told a joke, and the “women” didn’t laugh.” It’s a line that makes me laugh every time.

As the 90’s drew to a close, some rappers emerged to have long term careers and some remained legends but seemingly less active. DMX was one of those legends. He changed hip hop, but I hadn’t heard much about him except for the trouble that he had been in. The headlines of Billboard success were replaced with troubles with the law, drug use and a failed attempt by Iyanla Vanzant to fix his life. So when the pandemic hit and a friend asked me to produce an hip hop radio commercial for the rap icon, I was surprised. I looked him up and saw images of a guy who seemed unrecognizable. He had gained what we often call “Grown Man Weight” was noticeably older than last I had seen him. But while he had changed, his classics remained timeless.

The Making of The Radio Commercial

I often ask clients what songs they want to hear in their hip hop radio commercial. But there are some artist that I never ask the client about their songs. Crafting this commercial for DMX was like a walk down Memory Lane. It wasn’t a question of if there were enough hits to put in the ad. It was a question of whether a 60 second commercial would be long enough for all the hit songs that X had made. It of course wasn’t but I think I still captured the essence of what Earl Simmons had created.

Radio Imaging- Setting Up A New Radio Station

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Radio Imaging IS the reason I started doing voiceover. I absolutely love it. Especially Hip Hop and Urban AC Radio Imaging. I admired the big voice guys I would hear on Atlanta radio who would break out of character and say funny and outrageous stuff. As a recent college graduate at the time, I knew I could do what they did. I had the big voice. I had the humor. I could tell great stories. Years later, I’m a talent, accumulating more and more stations. 2019 was a very successful year for me in Imaging with the help of being signed to the Mix Group. But I’m always humbled by new stations regardless of where they are in the world or how large or small they are.

Transcript

I’m working on a brand new radio station. I am setting up a radio station and so I want to talk a little bit about getting started with a brand new radio station I’m Dane Reid the voice-over guy check me out.

So my agent hit me up and said okay Dane we got this new radio station for you I’m always excited about a new station I love radio imaging so this is a really great opportunity for me once all the paperwork was signed they take care of all that stuff on the back end I immediately got in contact with the program director I wanted to know a couple of things I wanted to know.

What their old sound was like? I wanted to know the format of the station. I wanted to know what the morning show and evening drive was like, because all of those things are gonna play into the way that I image the station. I am the official voice and I’m the branding voice for that station and so it was very important that I get what they want right and so I asked a bunch of questions. I asked what they liked most about my demo and what the program director told me was that he really liked the energy that I put in. I had smile, things like that, right.

So I listened back to my own demo and I try to mimic what I’m copying myself to make sure that I captured the true essence of what they wanted what they saw on what they expect for the imaging so they send you a packet and the packet has like 15 pages attached to it and so I’ve been working on that all weekend because I’m about to go out of town and I want to make sure that I get it right to make sure that you get it right you want to make sure that you read the lines multiple times in multiple ways unless it’s a line that I just know that I absolutely nailed it. So I may say “let’s keep it moving” right? “let’s keep it moving” or “let’s keep it moving” (all said differently), right? So they have different vibes to them. And I also look to see what section so they may be you know talking to consumers some of it requires voice acting some of it just requires the big voice.

Some of it just all depends. I’m not gonna give the same kind of energy to “here’s a slow jam” and to “here’s the quiet storm” as I’m gonna give to “the Saturday night party” you know saying so you just have to be very thoughtful about those kinds of things when you are setting up or a station additionally I listen to the station because that’s also very important again it’s all about a vibe about capturing that vibe and recreating it and sending it back to the station because for a year two years three years and hopefully many more years to come I’ll be the voice of this station so I just wanted to give a quick video about radio imaging and I’m Dane Reid the voice-over guy. Subscribe to my blog subscribe to my youtube and I’ll check you guys out later. I’m Dane Reid. I’m gone peace

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Wanna Hear Some of What I Do?

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If you’re interested in booking me, hit up Omar at the Mix Group (786) 286-4003 or omar@themixgroup.com or hit me up and I’ll introduce you to him.

What Is Voiceover? Virtual Career Day 2020

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Voiceover is acting, just like regular acting, except it leaves out the part where the body is seen, thereby exclusively utilizing words to convey a message. That message can be for entertainment purposes such as in animation or gaming. It can be for branding and advertising purposes as in the cases of radio imaging or commercials. Or it can be used to convey important info like it is in e-learning. Regardless of what it’s used for, voiceover is all around us. I noticed when I started doing voiceover that people seemed so fascinated with voiceover, wanting to know more about it and often asking how they could launch their own voiceover career.

Recently a friend of mine, who is the counselor at Sequoyah Middle School in Clayton County Georgia asked me to talk about voiceover for career day. What is voiceover? How do you start a voiceover career? How did I get started in voiceover? Do you need to have a great voice to get started in voiceover? These are all the questions I was prepared to answer for the students interested in a voiceover career. But we could have never predicted what might happen next.

No one could have predicted that within days, the entire world would change. Social distancing due to Covid 19 has changed the way we do everything, from the way we work to the way we communicate and interact and yes, even the way we do Career Day. With all of the changes, my planned appearance day at Sequoyah Middle School had to be changed to a virtual one.

I am no stranger to video. I produce at least one vlog a month so I figured that this month’s video blog would address whatever a middle schooler could throw at me. I am also no stranger to school-aged kids, having worked in public schools for 5 years. But this would be easier. It is not live. It’s from the comforts of my own home and it’s scripted and produced. This is certainly much easier. Still, I wanted to address the curiosity and concerns of the students. So I thought of past career days that I have spoken at and answered several of the questions that other students have asked.

It’s important that the students (or anyone) understand the goods, bads, and ugly of being a voiceover talent. I highlight the super great aspects of having a voiceover career like the flexibility to work from anywhere that has internet connection. I also talk about the negatives, like the fact that you have to invest a lot of money into training and equipment.

Ultimately Covid 19 will pass. The longterm effects of it on job prospects are not known. What we do know is that the curiosity for a voiceover career will remain for students such as those in Sequoyah Middle School and beyond. Within this short 8 minute video, I hope to give them something that makes their career choice a little bit easier.

If you know any student from any school, feel free to share this video with them. Having knowledge of a wide array of career choices helps students make informed decisions. If you have any questions, please leave them here or on the youtube page.

Everett Oliver – What The Hell Is A Booth Director and Why Do I Need One?

About Voice Over, Interviews & Insight, Uncategorized, voiceover, Voiceover Auditions, Voiceover Career, Voiceover Events, voices

Everett Oliver is a shy, introverted booth director who got his start 25 years ago in the animation world….. And if you know Everett you know that there is absolutely nothing shy nor introverted about him. Everett is a no holds barred, unfiltered, instinctive voiceover coach and booth director who fights hard for the success of his clients.

As a booth director, Everett directs clients auditions to help them book jobs. Voiceover actors often have auditions that they REALLY WANT to book. Some of these auditions are the BIG ONE that can make our careers. Whether it’s a network promo job or an animation project, we know this can mean the difference between success and failure. We sometimes spend hours recording the audition and then second-guessing ourselves on the read, the sound, the tone etc. Ultimately this can result in paralysis of analysis. In those moments, what we really need is a second ear.

That Second Ear

Everett is that Ear. Working with a voiceover audition coach like Everett accomplishes several things. It cuts down the time you spend on auditioning and allows talent to submit auditions faster. Sometimes agents submit the first good auditions as they come in and those are the ones that are most highly considered. Working with Everett also gives you insight into what the client is most likely thinking when he wrote the copy. Everett knows that world and he has an incredible instinct for predicting what books.

Taking His Show On The Road

Everett Oliver has been touring North America, taking his brass brand of coaching to various cities. And talent are better off for it. In my time speaking to Everett, he explained to me about an entire world that goes beyond what most talent could even imagine. It’s a fast-paced, backroom world where the end result is what matters. Everett knows that world, having been in Hollywood for many years and being a part of it. It’s a world where talent is replaceable and feelings can be a liability.

He’s a Tough Mutha Shut Yo Mouth

Everett’s style is all in preparation for acting in front of those people who run that world. He’s hardcore, but when you speak to him one-on-one, you realize that it’s all in love. He’s like the mother hen who looks out for you until you are ready to fly before he himself pushes you out of the nest. And believe me, Everett Oliver pushes. His personality throughout his session was both tough and hilarious.

Conclusion

There have been so many voiceover jobs that I crossed my fingers and threw up 7 hail Mary’s that I didn’t get. Somethings are just perfect for you and you’d love to call up someone special and say “Listen to me on this”. And those are the voiceover auditions that I would call a booth director for. Those are the jobs that I prep for with a voiceover coach months in advance for. Those are the jobs that I now keep Everett on speed dial for. Now, my booth director is Everett Oliver.

I Am NOT A Voiceover Expert!! Here’s Why!

About Voice Over, Uncategorized, Vlogging, voiceover, Voiceover Career

I am not a Voiceover Expert. I am a student. I taught a class yesterday called “Intro to Voiceover” to a group of excited students who knew nothing about voiceover. Most of them were local Atlanta actors who wanted to break into the business or to wet their beak. But the first thing that I told them is that I myself, even after 15 years, am a student of voiceover. The second thing that I told themwas “this is an intro course and after this, you’ll need extensive training and coaching to really get into the business and I will recommend others who specialize in guiding your career.”

See here’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s that I know that every day I am learning and in order to keep learning and grow my voiceover business, I need to keep the humility of a student. The other thing that I know is that many people in the industry with a cell phone camera bill themselves as a voiceover expert. Some of this is driven by the ability to sell courses, classes and advice to new students. Some of it is ego-driven and done for likes among peers. A friend who does a lot of great coaching and demo production once confided in me that there is more money in voiceover coaching and demo producing than there is in voiceover itself. I think that’s telling and a warning as to how students should invest their money in growing their businesses.

My Interviews

I do interviews as a way to learn valuable information from long-established and well-respected voiceover experts. I started it also to meet people in our industry and to watch them first hand conduct their businesses. Joe Loesch taught me to wake up every morning, get dressed and go to work in work clothes as I would for a corporate job. Dave Fennoy taught me to give every character a past, present and future. Anne Ganguzza taught me the value of consistency in marketing. And Joe Cipriano reminded me that relationships in business will help propel you forward faster. These are things that I may have taken longer to learn, but listening to voiceover experts whose opinions I value, helped put these things in perspective.

Why I Vlog

I love motivating people to be their best as I love being motivated by others. It cost money to buy equipment and travel to people’s homes wherever they may be. But I enjoy doing it. It pays when people recognize me and thank them for helping jumpstart their careers, but private lessons are a minuscule part of what I do. And after several lessons with me, I refer students to other coaches. That seems counterintuitive, but my focus is on continuous learning and advancing education. As for actual profit from vlogging, I make none. No ad dollars. No endorsements and no courses to sell. In full disclosure, my content is a form of advertising my business, but I mostly do this because I truly just love content.

Learning then Teaching

One of the biggest themes in my life has been learning and teaching. I am an avid learner. I grew up in a book store in New York that my father owned and learning was the central theme of my life. At a certain age, I realized that I had a passion for teaching people what I had learned. I eventually went on to work in the school system for 5 years. So, I love to impart information. In addition to wanting to share what I have learned in voiceover, I wanted to present that info in a fun way, in a way that you don’t see enough of online in our industry.

Telling Voiceover Stories

I wanted to fill a void that wasn’t being filled. There is plenty of advice in the voiceover industry. There are plenty of experts of varying levels doing podcasts, Youtube, Facebook Live shows and IGTV and I love a lot of that existing content. Some of the shows I enjoy are Ask Dave Fennoy and VO Buzz Weekly. But what I thought that I could do differently was to tell stories. I watch a lot of youtube videos from creators and enjoy the travel stories, the tech stories and the human stories that are told through video and narration. As a voice guy, I have always had a passion for verbally telling those stories. With a Panasonic GH4 in hand, I can tell those stories now cinematically as well as with my voice.

How I Got Started In Voiceover

About Voice Over, Blog, Children Books, Uncategorized, Voiceover Career

When people ask me how I got started in voiceover, I know what they are really asking; How to get started in voiceover and more importantly, how do they get started in voiceover? I also realize that they are listening for an easy answer. Since noticing that, I ask whether or not they are interested in doing voiceover, and from there, that shapes the way I answer the question. I either explain that their path in 2019 will be different from my path in 2004 or I tell them the actual story of my journey.

If the question is truly ” How I got started in voiceover ” then the real answer is long and complex. It started with my professor in College, Bill Clark mentioning to me that I should do voiceover. It was really early in the days of the internet and little info was available about…… really anything. I search the local newspaper, found nothing and quickly gave up. But as time went on and I graduated with a major in mass media, the word voiceover continued to resonate in my mind.

Fast forward a few years and I was working in the Fulton County Georgia School system. It was a job I enjoyed but it was never meant to be permanent. Voiceover seemed to continue to come up and I kept hearing big voice radio imaging guys like Mitch Faulkner, Pat Garrett, Mike Johnson, and others. I would imitate them and frequently said “I could do that”

But the catalyst to me actually getting started was being in New Orleans with my dad in the lobby of our hotel when I began thinking seriously about doing voiceover. I was still with the school system but what Bill Clark had advised me to do years prior was heavy on my spirit. At that moment, I concluded my thoughts when just shortly after, my homie Dolvett called me from Atlanta and said immediately upon me answering the phone, “Yo, I don’t know why I was thinking about this but, I think you should do voiceover”. I had never spoken to him about this prior.

When I returned to Atlanta, I got to the much-matured internet of 2004 and called the first voiceover talent I could find here in Atlanta. I wish I remembered her name, but she advised me to get a demo and send it out. She also told me a great studio that did demos. (That’s not advice I would give an aspiring voiceover talent today. Go get training first) So, I followed her advice. I called the studio and scheduled a time to record.

The studio session, much to the surprise of the engineers went so well that they gave me my demo free. The owner told me that I was the first aspiring voiceover talent, out of hundreds, to record with them who he actually thought had a future in the business and so he wanted to pay it forward by helping to launch my career. I was excited. I sent that demo around to different studios and agents and landed my first voiceover job on local radio playing a robot in a health product commercial. It paid me $75. I was also signed to a local agency, Arlene Wilson Management.

That year for Christmas, my then-girlfriend bought me my first microphone, the Rode NT1A. I, of course, had to buy an audio interface to go with it so I purchased the Emu 1616, which at the time was cutting edge technology. The Emu came with multiple recording programs, which included Cubase LE, which I became so accustomed to that it made Cubase my lifelong DAW. I worked this set up for 6 months when I found one regular client who paid me weekly which afforded me the ability to buy the TLM 103 microphone.

Throughout my early career, I attempted many things to make money in voiceover. I started a very expensive voiceover ringtone website which I profited only $6 before Apple’s Iphone killed the ringtone business. I sold my bible verse call-back tones to a company in Canada. But I also began doing radio commercials for local nightclubs, a skill I learned from a mentor in radio imaging named “Postman.” In 2006, I stopped working in the school system to do voiceover full-time.

By 2008 I published my first audiobook called “Dana The Procrastinator.” It was a physical hardcover book combined with a CD which was produced by my brother Omari and voiced by yours truly. Dana the Procrastinator was loosely based on my lifelong struggle with procrastination. It combined my two favorite pastimes, voiceover and writing. The book was great for me but was short-lived. I visited schools and bookstores from Atlanta to New York speaking and conducting workshops. Being an author even took me to Jamaica where I read to children at the Jamaican Public Library. But by 2009, the sales came to almost a halt and I was struggling financially.

At the end of 2009, I had lost the girlfriend who had encouraged me in my career up until then. While tough, it was the motivation I needed to push me to succeed and make bolder moves. As an introvert, I was forced to leave the house to find what I no longer had socially. My girlfriend was my crutch and I had to encounter other human beings which made me go out more. This meant using my business as a reason to attend more functions and meet more people. A new network could help make me more successful. While I lost love, I expanded my network. From there I began traveling outside of Georgia to find work. This was the formula which proved to be fruitful.

I’ve done a lot of things since 2010 keep my business going and growing. Training and educating myself to understand the voiceover industry has been helpful. Additionally, I have broadened the types of voiceover that I do. I’ve taken on much more narration work in the past few years. I started blogging and interviewing established voiceover talent to increase my own visibility in the industry. Also, I wanted to learn from other pros.

I have grown greatly over the years from how I got started in voiceover. My journey will not translate the same way into your journey if you are just getting started. The industry has changed. Technology has changed. The world has changed. My hope is that even if voiceover itself no longer exist 15 years from now, that I can be comfortable from the work I have done in this industry. And that I continue to be proud of that work.

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