Outside the Lines With Rap Genius
ItsTheReal Excerpt #1 - a.k.a.’s
SameOldShawn: How'd you guys get the idea to do that, anyway? New ones for every interview?
Eric Rosenthal, ItsTheReal: New ones? The original idea was, we had a video we did that was based off of World Star antics that we would see, and specifically in a Young Berg video
Jeff Rosenthal, ItsTheReal: Young Berg had gotten his chain stolen.
ER: His brother was threatening people online
JR: But had, like, six a.k.a.'s in a row. And so then we were like, what would be the lamest approach for us to do it? And so it was us, talking about how I had gotten my chain stolen, and how this person, whoever stole my chain, needs to give it back, because...
ER: Because why would you wear a chain with someone else's name on it?
JR: You don't know what goes on above 72nd Street
ER: So that was the video we did probably three years beforehand, or two years beforehand. And when we started doing the MTV interviews with different people like Stevie Wonder, Vinnie from Jersey Shore, or Dwight Howard, or Alice Cooper, or whoever, we decided that we were going to give ourselves an identity, and that it was going to change every time. And it got more and more ridiculous as we went on. It's a fun exercise for us to try and outwit each other and surprise each other with it, and then hopefully surprise the viewers too
And the best thing was that someone on Tumblr who was a fan of ours put together a list of all of the a.k.a.'s right in a row, which was pretty great