(gentle percussive music) >>This garage now that we're looking at, probably bigger than the bedroom that we all shared together when we were in New York.

When I was younger, you'd watch these TV shows like "Brady Bunch", and you see what the ideal American dream is.

(gentle music) When we first came to this country, there was a lot of struggle.

And for me, the American dream is the ability to overcome that struggle.

>>Opportunity is the important thing.

That motivated me to come to this country.

But when I landed in this country, I thought I'd made mistake in my life.

I cried so many tears.

I was bank manager in my country.

I have a lot of employees.

They used to do everything.

Even my staff would go for groceries.

In New York, we used to live in one room, one room, just $150 was rent.

It was sublet, and the landlord does not know that we lived there.

(keyboard clacking) I worked for $2 an hour, $3 an hour, and I slept two hours, three hours a night.

>>He came from Bangladesh where he was top of his class in one of the best colleges you could go to in Bangladesh.

To come from that, to then working at a candy store or working at McDonald's, delivering pizzas, doing all of these jobs at once, you know, you have to humble yourself.

My dad did that.

My struggles are different than his struggle.

His struggle is where am I gonna get my next meal?

My struggle was finding myself, the luxury of deciding what my career's gonna be.

He didn't even have the luxury of that.

And same thing with my mom.

My mom's hard work inspired me, because my mom was not only juggling between being a traditional Bengali housewife, but she was still working, walking to the bus station every day.

She couldn't drive yet when she first came, so, she not only had home-cooked meals ready for us every day, but also worked a full-time job.

I don't know how she did it.

I mean to me, my parents or my superheroes.

>>We come from a very traditional family household where education is such a priority.

When I first went to college, my major was accounting.

My father's an accountant too.

>>Come here, come here Tash.

Come have some cigar talk.

>>Know what I'm sayin'?

>>This is, this is Tash, he helped us create our sound.

>>But for the fact that he allowed me to like change my major.

And he saw that I was really good at what I was doing.

I really thank them for that, because they let us be as creative as possible.

>>If you talk to anyone, especially from the coming from Indian subcontinent, and they want their children to be the doctor or the engineers or the professor in a university, that's their dream, but we realized, especially me, I think I was a great advocate for that that go and do what you want to do, because if you put your mind to that, your heart is set to do that, you will achieve the goal regardless.

>>You know, a lot of people say you shouldn't work with family, because it messes things up.

For me its the opposite, I love having my family and friends around.

>>The show don't get done without paperwork, baby.

>>My wife is my business partner.

Before being married, like I was kind of lost, as far as how to run a business.

Because I only care about just the creative side.

She tries to think of the budgeting and the money side, like all those things.

I don't wanna negotiate prices, my wife is an expert at that.

>>Even I am surprised I'm leading, like, 50 people on set.

It was like, I never thought something like that is gonna happen in my life.

>>Essentially, this is a very male dominated industry and having an executive female producer on board, it's just very refreshing, especially someone like Punam.

On my phone, I mean, I call her the boss, I mean, seriously.

>>You and I will do the swim together.

So we get that and then we'll do the swim over.

I'll lay on the, you know, lay on the floor and you swim over.

>>Brandon, can we get her where she stays under water for longer.

>>Yep.

>>Yeah, 'cause the shot is supposed to be that she stays in for a little bit and then the bubble shows up and it goes to the next scene.

So if we can get, I know humanly possible as long as we can.

>>When I came in this country, I never thought I'm gonna be produced something in media or film.

Then Shomi started to work in Karmaloop.

Sometimes I go in with him in his shoot, like how they make a commercial, how they make a documentary or how to make music videos.

Then he decided to take a break from his job and he was like, why can't we start, like me and you can try at least for six months.

If we can do something, then we're going to start to run our production company.

If we feel like it's not going to happen or anything like that, then we're gonna stop and he gonna join the job again.

>>Alright, rolling.

>>Music!

>>Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

I think we took the best decision that time.

>>When you think of being in entertainment, you quickly think New York or LA.

If it wasn't for being in Virginia, I wouldn't have found my inspiration, which was Pharrell and Chad.

When I found out they were locals, I was like, I gotta go find these guys.

I gotta figure out what I can do for them, I don't care if it's bringing them coffee.

I finally got my chance when I met Doug Dosher.

>>Lucid Media, we all started 15 years ago in his bedroom at his mom's house and dad's house.

>>If you worked with Shomi back in the day, then you know about his little room, 7 Kings Roll, back when his brother Tash was famous, or infamous however you wanna say it.

And he would be in the room and Shomi's like get outta here, and his parents would be downstairs, like, who are these people coming over here.

>>Growing up, I would always see my brother have a lot of music artists come through in and out the house, stay till like three in the morning working, and just to see my parents be so supportive.

That really gave me the courage to actually say, I also can be creative also.

>>He's just a young guy comin' outta ODU, he had another partner with him, named Phil, that was his homeboy, one of the best friends.

We linked up because I was doing some work with Star Track and Pharrell, I had some rock bands and stuff.

We needed flyers.

>>Yeah, a lot of people know about that, but those flyers back then we didn't have Instagram and Facebook and MySpace, so you really had to promote with a flyer, a card stock postcard to tell people about your album coming out, etcetera.

>>Guys like us weren't, you know, computer literate yet.

So we needed guys like Shomi and his crew and Illusive Media.

>>Even though I was still in college with no degree in arts, they just trusted me.

I was offering them things that other people weren't offering in the early 2000s, which was doing a website for free or filming them behind the scenes and being able to upload that to the website.

>>The year 2000, that time when the internet really sped up with high speed that's when everything changed, because everyone was able to, you can transfer music faster, You can do videos, like we were doing like super low quality videos that sound like you were smashing a tin ball or something.

And it took like 40 minutes to download, but we were still doing it and finding free hosting with like 50 megabytes or whatever and then starting up a different account for each video.

Like we really made it work.

>>What's up y'all, it's your man Malice, one half of the Clipse, one third of the Re-Up Gang.

>>I've know Gene for a very, very long time.

I was always around him because his brother and everything, but we really connected when we both kind of went through like a similar spiritual struggle together.

Both of us wanted to just quit, just not be part of any of this.

And then he came up with a very innovative way to tell his story.

>>So like Shomi was saying, we were definitely going through, I guess, a spiritual war.

We totally appreciate the culture.

We totally appreciate the music and everything that we were into, but we just saw, we had to paint both sides of the coin.

You know what I'm saying?

Shomi and I think we a, it's safe to say, we had a cult following on the blogs that we were putting out.

I even remember at one time I think it was XXL magazine that said I had, I think one of the top 10 blog sites and I didn't even know that's what I was doing, we were just having fun telling our story.

>>Hip Hop changed my life.

It's a genre that welcomes everybody that I grew up loving, because it's so gritty and I can relate to the grittiness, living through a lot of the struggles early in my life.

I can connect to that.

My dad, like, he knows what I do for a living but he doesn't know like all the rapper names.

So when he found out that I was working with Ric Flair, he's like, yo, you gotta make me proud with this one.

>>I get to make a living off of putting cats on faces of people.

I'm so thankful that I'm getting to do what I love for living.