This new Kreayshawn mini-doc is perfectly poignant nostalgia

Watch Someone Special: Kreayshawn’s Home Movies and read an interview with director Deja Spears.

Kreayshawn’s music is waiting to be rediscovered. Just watch “Gucci Gucci,” her 2011 breakout single, and tell me it doesn’t still feel like a possible future. She arrived like a cruise missile wearing cat eyeliner and chunky jewelry, crafting a classic of recession-era music by professing her independence from designer labels. A Bay Area brat before brats were brat, Kreayshawn quickly became a black sheep of blog rap and a viral star when the internet was still figuring out how to turn those into successful careers. But before all that, she was a young girl called Natassia with a video camera, making home movies from a small apartment in Oakland she never thought anyone would see.

Years after they were filmed, Deja Spears, a 28-year-old film school graduate, came across some of that footage on Kreayshawn’s YouTube page. A short VHS clip of a 10-year-old Kreayshawn in her backyard with friends and family, Project Pat’s “Chickenhead” blasting in the background, quickly became one of Spears’s comfort videos; ironically, the debate over appropriation that helped torch Kreayshawn’s career over a decade ago didn’t impact Spears at all. “She is exactly who every other white female rapper thinks they are,” Spears, a Black woman, tells me over a video call. “Growing up on that stuff versus being introduced to it by the internet much later is a totally different experience. It just reminded me a lot of me as a child in my backyard in Inglewood.”

In January, Spears cold DM’d Kreayshawn and asked her for more footage. She sent over an hour-and-a-half of videos from a huge collection, and Spears spent the following weeks assembling Someone Special: Kreayshawn’s Home Videos, a 12-minute mini documentary premiering online today on The FADER. Split between two chapters — Kreayshawn at ages 10 and 16 — Someone Special is a compelling portrait of an influential star’s younger years, made with a light touch and a keen understanding of how minor moments can create a rich history.

You don’t have to be a Kreayshawn fan to appreciate Someone Special, but it helps. Glimmers of the goofy star to come shine through when she flails around to “Oochie Wally” with a friend, and during a parody of the reality show Cheaters (V-Nasty, one of Kreayshawn’s longtime cohorts, can be seen in this skit). But just as importantly, it documents a kind of youth that may no longer exist: After the film’s premiere last Friday at Whammy! Analog (ahead of the debut of October Crow by Jack Haven, star of I Saw The TV Glow), Spears says she was approached by tearful attendees in their teens and early 20s: “They can’t really recall a time where they were able to film something without the idea of an audience inside of their head.”

Watch Someone Special: Kreayshawn’s Home Videos above. Below, read a Q&A with Deja Spears about the film’s creation and her dream documentary project.

The FADER: The editing of Someone Special is very savvy. It really draws a portrait of a young person without much narrative. Could you walk me through how you put the raw footage together?

Deja Spears: I’ve always been someone who has been a big fan of making little montage vlogs. I think everyone had a phase 15 years ago on YouTube just playing around with iMovie. Because there wasn’t very much footage of her as a 10-year-old, I wanted to show a well-rounded example of what it felt like to be a 10-year-old girl. You’re with your friends, you’re with your mom and your grandpa, you’re showing off your lizard, you’re playing with your PlayStation. It’s pretty much the same thing every day.

Your doc reminded me in some ways of another short called Dirty Girls, because they both change in subsequent viewings. At first you might watch your film and think “This is fun, they’re so goofy,” and a month or two later you could be overwhelmed by sadness for what these teenagers aren’t revealing for the camera. I think that’s the appeal of a lot of coming-of-age media.

That’s why I was so drawn to this project. I’m a huge coming-of-age film buff. I love every single John Hughes film ever made, and I’m big fan of all the Michael Cera movies like Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, they’re really special to me.

I think the biggest part of it was feeling like I had missed out on a piece of my adolescence and clamoring on to everyone else’s. My mom and I had a storage unit full of all of our things and we lost all of it. So I’m just obsessed with gazing into everyone else’s lives and seeing their teenage experiences. I collect yearbooks from the ‘70s. I have Victorian-era photos that I found at antique shops. I’m just really obsessed with everyone else’s nostalgia and their memories.

If you could make a documentary about anything, what would it be?

There was a black woman who was arrested in the Victorian era for prostitution, and all that is known is that her name was Goldie Williams. In her mugshot she’s making this face. She’s pissed off, she’s upset. If I could find more information about her or find her family, I would love to make a documentary about her.