Man of the Year Winner: Daps
Words Jason Kwame Owusu-Frimpong
Daps - best known as Flex God Daps - is the Man of the Year. As a maverick director, Daps continually curates well-thought out, Hollywood-high taste level music videos to accompany the biggest hits of this era. The likes of Migos, Drake, Wizkid, Lil Baby Chris Brown, Summer Walker, Doja Cat, Cardi B (pause for breath) and the City Girls all entrust their visuals to the lens & perspective of this one man and his team. Why? Daps doesn’t cut corners.
No expenses - nor hours of research & creative ideations - are spared when it comes to his storylines. Whether it be scenes set in the icy & mountainous alps, to Soul Train inspired get downs, high-speed money heists, not forgetting smooth & suave luxury auction houses; Daps understands the assignment and gets it done right. One key part of Daps’ success is his ability to work alongside women creatives, to portray women in the best and strongest light possible - literally and figuratively.
Since plotting his official branch-out of London to the US in 2015, Nigerian-born Daps has set a high precedent, and an almost unattainable standard for other directors to follow. Not a small feat, by any measure. The odds were in his favour, since the timing of his move and debut as a director perfectly married well with the growing amount of time spent on Youtube
That’s not all. This year, Channel 4 called on Daps’ production company Cre8tive Row to take the reins of ‘multi part docu-ality’ Highlife. The show - which follows the lives of successful young West Africans living in Britain - has single handedly shifted the narrative and brought an opening for improvement of how the diasporic culture is portrayed in media, as well as the opportunities granted*. His goal? Well in 2019, he vowed to “Change people’s perception of things [...] and educate, pushing important narratives”. Safe to say: Mission accomplished.
*Thanks to the show’s debut, cast members have been recruited for Samsung and Mac commercials.