
By JOZEN CUMMINGS
NY TIMES ARTICLE LINK
The idea of a star being born from Web video isn’t new. There was Lonelygirl15, for instance, the fictional teenager whose YouTube videos drew an international audience last year.
But the Web is usually where those stars stay. Which is why it was notable this year when the director Chris Robinson featured a largely unknown kid named Samgoma Edwards in the rapper Jay-Z’s latest video. Back in 2004, Edwards, who was then 11, began a collection of homemade music videos for Jay-Z songs with the help of an older brother and a friend. The series, which they called “Young Hov Project” and posted on YouTube, featured Edwards as Jay-Z — a no-brainer role for a young man who looked so much like the rapper. The videos soon went viral and won Edwards and his partners many fans, including Robinson.
So when Robinson began looking for someone to play a teenage Jay-Z in the video for the hit song “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is. . .),” all his casting director had to do was log on to YouTube. Though more than 100 people ultimately auditioned for the part, “it had always been in the back of my mind that this is someone I needed to work with,” Robinson says of Edwards.
In the final cut of the video, which appeared on national television in November, shots of the real Jay-Z partying at his 40/40 nightclub are juxtaposed against shots of Edwards as Jay-Z in 1988 partying at a community center. With his uncanny imitation of Jay-Z — and his accidental audition, courtesy of YouTube — Edwards steals the show.
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