Life is a mixtape… Our “Stereo SICKS” project was born from a simple idea and blind trust. SICK STAR shoots are known for having a certain edge of sexiness with elements of Hip-Hop & music and an underlying sense of danger. As our Art Director Ellen Kwan puts it, “just the right amount of wrong.” While most shoots are usually very conceptual and planned to every detail with location, wardrobe & costuming, and props & visuals to tell a certain story, we decided to strip everything to a bare minimum (quite literally), and build it back up like layers of sound to make our music. Our girls are the primary focus of our project. They are the faces and spokespeople of our brand, and our biggest supporters. Posing nude for us, a first and only time for some of them, required the utmost trust in us to represent them in the best light. With our girls fully bare, they were asked to interact and play with boomboxes and cassette tapes as they felt most comfortable in front of the camera. While uninhibited, we’d do our best to capture each one’s unique personality as how they wanted to be shown.

The element of danger would be a collaborative effort with our friends and Fam across the nation that we have respected and admired for their artistic talent. We paired each girl with an artist and sent them out their photos. Open format, the artists were given very little restrictions on the artwork, giving them free reign to input their own style. The final products were always a surprise.

Each work, a song with its own beautiful story to tell, “Stereo SICKS: featuring the SICK STAR Boombox Brigade” as it lies before you is a compilation of the blood, sweat, tears, trials and tribulations of our journey as a brand and our bond as a Family. We’d push each other to the limits trying to pull the best that we’d see in each other’s potential. Naked bodies and souls bared, there would be insecurities, family and significant other issues, scheduling conflicts, inner struggles, search for inspiration, and other obstacles that we would work on during our creation process to help each other overcome. This is our Family, this is our art, this is our mixtape.

Just push play… do what you feel.

“Stereo SICKS Art (Boombox Brigade)” featuring SICK STAR Boombox Brigade x SICKS Degrees Artists. Photography by imagenix.