A guy who’s destined for greatness and always ten pages ahead. He started The Upsetter and created countless great editorials from idea to finished product and has been part of the last two beautiful Louis Vuitton shows with Virgil at the helm. Someone I’m honored to call my friend and excited for his future. A conversation with Cam Hicks.
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You’ve definitely made some noise while living in Virginia but how did you get your start in New York?
I interned for FADER in 2013 out here, but while I was doing that I was doing design for ASAP mob. That’s where I got a lot of my connections and people started to really know who I was. I lived with Bari and Ian (Connor) in Jersey and did work with them at SXSW and wanted to continue, so they said I can do an internship and I ended up doing SXSW two more times with them.
But that summer was probably the worst because I basically told my parents I wanted to drop out to stay here and my dad’s only response was “if you drop out don’t hit my phone again” so obviously I didn’t drop out.
Were you learning a lot during the internship?
Not for real. It was more logistical stuff, and since I knew how to use a camera they would just let me know like “Oh we’re interviewing hitboy today” so I’d be on the camera. So I got to meet people but I wasn’t really learning that much from them. I really wanted to do it to get here and get my name out there and it worked, but not exactly how I wanted it to.
So obviously you get a lot of inspiration from books and magazines, do you set out to get material to be inspired or is it just consumption because you admire it?
Yeah books are the main source for sure, and it’s sporadic. If I have a feeling of getting something new I’ll get it, but there’s no real structure behind it. It comes and goes, I know I need to continue to see new things and bring new things to my attention but I don’t have any type of theme with it.
The most structure I have, is having these kinds of things in my ebay watch list or just going to bookstores.
What’s your parents background?
My dad’s story is sort of crazy. He was heavy into playing baseball and got a scholarship to play at George Mason. They were saying he’d go to the MLB but he didn’t really want that lifestyle. So eventually he quit the team, gave the school the scholarship back and took on 3 fast food jobs. When he graduated he got a job doing sales at Xerox and he started his own company making invoice software and he’s been doing that for about 20 years.
My mom has been doing marketing for a while.
Neither of them do the things I do, I more so got that from my granddad. He was an art teacher at Howard University for a minute. He painted a lot and has been everywhere. Definitely a cultured dude. I used to stay with them when my parents would be at work so he would have me draw and do all types of things like that.
Was it really serious when you were with him or more so a fun activity?
At first it was like oh this is cool, but I always say I never saw doing anything like this as a career because my parents didn’t see it as a career. So I never got an opportunity to see it that way. And as much as I hated my college experience, if I could go back I would do it again because it pushed me to do this type of thing. It pushed me to see what I didn’t like. I feel like that's what college is for because either you're going to learn what you want to learn or you're going to figure out what you don't want to learn.
That and SHHO (Student Hip-Hop Organization) and my mentor who lives out here now - is part of a two person team called Uncle & Prophet. He started SHHO and that’s when I really got interested in it, the other chapters were always doing crazy stuff and I wasn’t interested in ODU’s. So seeing other chapter’s bring Kendrick to Virgina Tech in 2012, Mac Miller, Big Sean, Pac DIV, Currensy and all these names that are big now, we were on it early and making content around it was like ‘okay I want to do this, and there’s money in it’.
We always talk about the current state of things, especially within photography and art and how instagram plays a part in it. It gets tough within these platforms because all we see is “success”. So it’s like “be successful now or it’s the end of the world”.
You’re young, you’re early, and it’s not the same for everyone. The thing that clouds everyone’s judgement is instagram, because you see people popping online and getting all this attention at certain ages but that’s just them, you know. It takes a while, and it depends on your end goal. A lot of those people hit their end goal... which was to get popping online with photography. But now what? I’m actually trying to be a proper creative director and there’s literally none that started under the age of 32. I know it’ll take a while, and it is a roller coaster, but sometimes you just gotta take a step back and realize that
Yeah it’s definitely all about longevity.
Besides that realization, what keeps it moving for you when you hit a wall?
I don’t really have passion for anything else. I’ve done enough things that I didn’t like to do that again. So in my head I don’t have a choice. It’s going to be this. I don't want to do anything else. And I have people like Aijani and Basil... my mentor put it into perspective for me. The responsibility is beyond me now, my end goal is not just about me, it’s about setting them up to do better things. So I can’t think about it from a selfish perspective. The goal should never change, it should be the same as when I started and sometimes you have to take a step back and realize that. And you have to be so focused and make money because it’s so expensive to live out here.
I was just listening to an Interview with Alec Soth where he mentioned how you can’t focus on the money aspect of things - in reference to making work, because it’ll hobble everything.
It clouds your judgement. Especially out here, because the things that have made me the most money is the work I’ve wanted to do the least. The cool shit doesn’t make bread.
Yet…
Yet
What’s your affiliation with madbury? The Upsetter and Madbury did a lot for me and you guys have created great content over the years.
Basically I was modelling for a shoot and this guy Darryl was shooting it, and we shot it on the roof of Phil’s apartment complex. I hadn’t met anybody that was spot on to what I like. He’s chill, he comes from a basketball background like me, and I was like ‘okay we can relate.’ We ended up kicking it downstairs with Phil and playing video games, and this was before I really had a grasp on what Madbury was. I knew who Phil was from award tour but I hadn’t been following Madbury because I was busy in college. And a week later I saw Darryl and asked if they wanted to hoop, and he said he’s down but Phil is gonna be in Chile so he can’t. I’m 19 so I’m like ‘how is he going to Chile? What is he going to Chile for?’ and he said ‘for Madbury’, and I was like ‘WTF is Madbury?’ and he started showing me everything and I was like ‘This is what yall do?,’ and at that point I was like wtf am I doing, why am I interning for Fader, why am I helping Bari, i’m trying to do this.
On The Upsetter
So when I got back to school, I made a pitch deck and my boy had a web design background and helped me with The Upsetter. At the time we were listening to The Upsetters, and I want it to have an underdog theme, because the last time people took VA serious was the early 2000’s. That’s the narrative I’m trying to push. So at the time it just clicked, “why don't we call it The Upsetter?”
How did working with Virgil come about?
It’s funny because there’s so many different factors that go into opportunity in NY. Who you know is obviously the biggest thing. Me and Virgil have been following each other on instagram and tumblr for years. I knew a girl who ended up working at empty gallery and Virgil reached out to the employees looking for a photographer in NY and she recommended me, so they hit me up for that and I was doing stuff for them for about a year. Then one day I’m getting food with Arnold (Uncle & Prophet) and he’s telling me I'm not really leveraging all my connections as much as I should be. So we’re sitting eating tacos and he’s like “text virgil right now!” and I'm telling him it’s 11 at night, I'm not doing that, and he kept pushing and saying “just text him and ask what’s good with a job at LV.” So I texted him that and he responded “you’re mainly based in NY, maybe we can catch a vibe when you’re in paris” So I flew to Paris a week later and met him there.
What were you doing while you were there?
Basically on a day to day I was doing BTS documentation of everything, and shooting a lot of stuff in the atelier. Other than that I was doing some styling for their fittings and I would sit in on the fittings and help them out. Third I was doing some concepting and some ideas. Those are the main three things I was doing when I was there, that week was definitely top 5 moments of my life. That moment was one of the biggest times in fashion for african-american people in history, and being considered a part of the staff was crazy to me
Act like you’ve been there before - what does that mean for you?
My granddad used to say that to my dad growing up. He had two sayings, and for a while I thought these were just corny ass sayings old people say, It was that and “you never get more out of life than what you put into it.”
That needs to be the philosophy for the way a lot of people do things.
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What do you make of this current climate where there is an oversaturation of self proclaimed creatives?
It’s a climate that has been frustrating to watch, being that this “lifestyle” that I give my life and soul to has just been taken as a hobby as of late. But also, you can feel the creative destruction coming. All this shit will hit the fan and the real ones will last. The eternal man.
If you could put together an editorial for any brand out there who would it be?
Kapital
What is your preferred way of expressing yourself, whether it be putting together an editorial, photography, making graphics?
I’d say a mix of graphics and editorials, graphics are literally what goes through my head and my energy at any given time in this crazy ass journey, editorials are more of a overall theme on how I look at life.
Where would you like to see yourself in the next few years?
Behind the scenes, more direction work, working with my friends on what I love, with success. For who doesn’t matter if I got that.
Also, how was your second experience in Paris for the second round of Virgil at LV?
A blessing. First round was just an eye opening experience to a world that I thought I’d never see. Second round I was nose to the ground and focused on making work for the long haul.