Working with Drake was an amazing experience. I made a lot of mistakes with that but I definitely have no regrets. And it was the first music video I ever directed. I couldn’t believe we were shooting a music video for Drake. Drake is still is the biggest artist right now, but at that time he was huge. “Marvin’s Room” was a big learning experience for us. It was about representing the lifestyle for everyone to see. “Marvin’s Room” took place at Goodnight Bar. All the locations we shot at is where we’d be 24/7. Nobody really knew what was happening up here. At that time, Toronto didn’t have a great presentation. The setting for both videos were based on showing his personal day-to-day life in Toronto for the world to see. I mean, it’s something he’s always wanted to do, but he wanted to capture that visually in both the “Marvin’s Room” and “Headlines” videos. What was your inspiration for the “Marvin’s Room” music video?Īt that time Drake really wanted to put on for the city. From there, they started giving us projects. They asked us how we felt about helping him out with some creative. They reached out to us and said they loved the whole creative direction. Oliver discovered Abel’s music and showed Drake. So obviously a lot of my inspiration came from there. Tumblr opened my mind to the world and what it had to offer in terms of design, fashion, music, culture, and everything else. Being a kid from Scarborough who really hadn’t left the city at all, I just didn’t know much about anything. I remember being hooked on Tumblr as a kid. Where did you go to find references for your projects then? Taylor discuss the early influences that shaped his work for The Weeknd, what it was like working with Drake, and the importance of fostering the next generation of Toronto creatives. “I was pulling favors, using ex-girlfriends, current girlfriends, just whoever was around.” In 2011, he directed the video for Drake’s “Marvin’s Room,” and later “Headlines” and shot the Take Care album cover.įresh off the European leg of The Weeknd’s The Legend of the Fall tour, we sat down with Taylor, who was recently recognized by Forbes in its prestigious 30 Under 30 list, for his first-ever interview. “Early on, we literally had no budget,” he remembers. He also handled all branding, marketing, and creative directed the Canadian singer’s live shows. Since then, Taylor has photographed the covers for The Weeknd’s mixtapes Thursday, and Echoes of Silence, as well as the three-disc mixtape Balloons Trilogy. (Alleyne is now a director for XO projects.) “That experience really shaped us, inspired us, and gave us everything we needed to start working on our first project, which wound up becoming House of Balloons.” But Taylor, The Weeknd, and Alleyne saw it as an opportunity to network and shape their careers. “We were all living off welfare checks at the time,” Taylor says. If we really wanted to live our dreams, we felt like we had to live the lifestyle non-stop.” trying to catch the last one to go back home and then do the same thing all over the next day. It just got to the point where we were like, ‘We can’t fucking hop on the train at 1:30a.m. “We wanted to live the lifestyle 24/7,” he says. But he eventually surrendered to The Weeknd’s persuasion. Taylor had planned on becoming a nurse, and he admits he was hesitant to drop out at first. At that point, The Weeknd was already dabbling in music and Taylor was developing his skills in photography. We were just cracking jokes at each other.” Taylor and The Weeknd shared interests in music and creative photography, and quickly formed a bond.Īt 18, he and The Weeknd dropped out of high school together, and moved into a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto with their friend Hyghly Alleyne. “I was wearing a pink polo and he had a baby blue du-rag on. “We had the same business class and I remember it vividly,” he says, laughing. The 26-year-old, who’s dressed in a black Puma tracksuit and matching sneakers, met The Weeknd (“Abel,” to him) the first day of their freshman year of high school in Scarborough, a suburban district of Toronto. “It always comes together in the last minute,” says Taylor.
But right now, the creative director for Grammy award-winner The Weeknd is planning several projects for artists under the singer’s XO record label. Taylor, who now lives in L.A., had planned on only visiting family and friends while he was in town. Slumped in the back corner on the main floor of East Room, a members-only communal office space in Toronto’s Riverdale neighborhood, La Mar Taylor is glued to his phone.
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