Matt Koza and His Crew

     A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from Matt Koza asking me if I’d be interested in doing behind the scenes interviews for the latest Foreign Exchange dual video that he was directing. “Of course.” I replied, but I think he already figured as much. We’d forged a friendship our first year at Drexel over the usual partying and bullshit, but so many conversations led us to a group that would ultimately be a vital part of his career: Little Brother.
     Crazy to think how much has changed since freshman year. But if you’d balled up and thrown the passion our group of friends had about their respective dreams, Koza found ways to be the first one to go get it.
     His start with the Hall Of Justus stemmed from a chance message he sent via MySpace. “I was going to North Carolina to see a friend for Spring Break and I went on at midnight and was like, fuck it. I might as well try it, since they’re based out of there. I sent Big Dho [HOJ's manager] a message and he sent me back an email the same night. Coincidentally, him and Big Pooh were talking about how they were going to pick up their visual game.”
     At this point, Koza’s work only included a few short films and some work he had done for school, but Dho saw that Koza had an uncanny ability to make something interesting out of nothing. A meeting was arranged.
     ”That was probably the greatest moment of my life,” he laughs, “I was this random white kid, waiting in Barnes and Noble like an idiot and Dho rolls up in his Escalade, his son Cory sitting in the passengers seat. I could tell Cory was judging me the entire time, looking me up and down and looking back at Dho like, “You serious, dad? This white boy?”
     Being the white boy was something HOJ made him come to terms with immediately while he accompanied them on tour. “They actually told me, “You know what we like best about you? We thought you were going to act like somebody else but you’re yourself.” I mean, I talk white, I act white, I guess I dress stereotypically white and they appreciated that I didn’t try to pretend to be someone else. I think the only thing that helps is being myself.”

     It’s hard not to grow fond of him, in all honesty. Koza’s unforgivably himself at all times, which means he’s forever with a smile on his face and a sweetheart’s aim in his intention. All gimmicky facades aside, Koza’s biggest selling point is his personality: easy-going yet very polite, goofy yet completely determined when it comes to his career. The relationships he has and continues to secure will undeniably be maintained on his journey to the top.
     Since his addition to the team, Koza’s been able to add to his resume a number of HOJ videos, including tour blogs, two Rapper Big Pooh videos, two double Foreign Exchange videos and a Chaundon video, among others.
     ”Artists come to you and give you a song and for the most part, they don’t know what they want. They trust my opinion and what I’m thinking, which is cool. But the best is the payoff afterwards– if you execute the same idea you had in the beginning, if you can see your idea come to life and share it with other people, that’s the greatest feeling.”
He’s not so omnipotent yet, though. He’s had a few instances where things haven’t gone according to plan– or even the vision in his head.
     ”For Pooh’s Comeback, I write this 9 page treatment, like invested my heart and soul into it. Pooh’s getting rushed into this hospital and they have to cut him up with a chainsaw and they start pulling things out of him, like an MPC and Khrysis’s hand snatching someone…” He laughs, “They looked at me and were like, “Nah. We’re not having things come out of Pooh.”

     After he writes an approved treatment and shoots the video, he comes out with a first draft in about two weeks, three at most. Koza does all his editing, partially because it saves money, but probably more because he’s such a control freak. He goes through it all frame by frame, making sure the artist hasn’t missed a word, and pairs the cuts in the beat to his editing. It’s safe to say the white boy has rhythm.
     Koza was enrolled in Drexel University’s film program until he dropped out earlier this year, which would have been his last. “There was school and there was my career, and I wasn’t doing either one fully. Actually, I wasn’t even doing school half, it was more like 20% and my career was 80%. I left because at the end of the day, people aren’t going to ask me what my GPA was in college or whether I have a degree. It’s about the work i’ve done.”
     Koza has had his hands full since then. On top of the videos that have been released, he’s working on videos for RJD2′s new album, Chaundon’s new album, and a few projects for Kam Moye aka Supastition, as well as a short film based off the movie Reservoir Dogs (to parallel HOJ’s mixtape of the same name). He’s also working on a Little Brother documentary, which has him digging in crates of archived footage from concerts and previous interviews. The release is set for hopefully the end of this year.

     He credits the work to his team, who he made sure to mention at least ten times during the interview. His gratitude only solidifies his relationships with them, as evident on set and through the work he’s cranked out in the past year.
     ”Artists congratulate my team because they network so well. But it’s like, if they don’t like you, why would they work with you?”
     As for plans for his career, Koza hopes to get out of directing and more into producing. Ultimately, he hopes to make a transition from music videos to commercials or documentaries. Although his past work shows performance videos and concept pieces, his partiality is more towards storytelling, something he hopes will be evident in his work (look out in the next month for Koza’s work on the Foreign Exchange’s latest video “I Wanna Know” as part of the trilogy with “Take Off The Blues”/”Valediction”).

Words by SamSun
Pictures by Nakeya B.

Check out Matt Koza’s work here: