Indianapolis’ Ace One recently took to the streets of the city to make his first-ever Music Video in a Day for his track "Stuter, Step, BANG! (It's Not That Easy)," with the help of Running Bodies Productions (Dylan May and Charlie Roberts--read up on a few of their past collaborations with MFT here and here). The track comes off of his recent Rap Monster Redux release, which you can find embedded below in addition to some of his older work with s.a.i.n.t. RECON straight out of the MFT archive. I caught up with the hip-hop behemoth to discuss what all went down.

Seth Johnson: Walk me through the process of making this video.

Ace One: Dylan [May, of Running Bodies] gave me a call. It was just like, "Let’s meet up downtown." It wasn’t the first video I’ve ever done. I’ve worked with some guys and gals where me and the people that were actually getting the video done did a storyboard, but we didn’t do a storyboard. I kind of just wanted to see what his idea was.

We got together downtown and did the scenes up on the parking garage, and then ended up going down to Fountain Square. For that particular song, I had just always envisioned something really easy. I never saw a story. I had always envisioned just myself rapping naturally, because that’s just how the song comes across to me. So with him having the same idea, it was really awesome. It went ridiculously well. I think we got everything done in a couple hours.

SJ: You said you’ve done other videos in the past. So how would you say the time constraint particularly impacted this one?

AO: Usually with a video, you’re going to wait anywhere from a week to a month before you have the finished product. It was really cool to shoot a video and be thinking about it, and then see it the next day. I just think it’s a novel idea. Why can’t you do a video in a day, even if there is a story to it? Like, "Hey. Everybody get in there and know what you need to do and know what’s expected. Don’t fuck around. Get the video shot so the editing team can get to work.

SJ: So there were no challenges at all that came along during the process?

AO:  No. The biggest challenge was finding out where they were. I had no idea that there was a YMCA in the downtown area on Market Street. So the biggest challenge for me was just locating them at the time (laughs). But other than that, everything was really easy. I like to consider myself a true performer and a true entertainer, so with that being said, I was just able to treat it like a very comfortable show or performance.

SJ: What do you like about the end result?

AO: My favorite part is that the city is involved, but it’s not just your typical aspects of the city—it’s not just like your Monument Circle. Not to do downplay Monument Circle, but I kind of dig the fact that if anybody had ever been to Indy or if anybody knows Indy, they’ll look and be like, "Oh wow. I know where that is." But to the world’s eyes, it just looks like another cool metropolis.  

You can read more about Ace One and everything he's about in Kyle Long's cover story on him for NUVO from back in March.