Don Elway works to capture the sounds (and sights) of the streets.

In late 2023, hip-hop artist Don Elway dropped his six-song EP Not Ordinary. In order to create autobiographical mini-movie to accompany the EP, he collaborated with Dion Cooper of TruGrind Productions. The movie was released on YouTube in January, and highlights the face-offs, hardships, and struggles of growing up in the street environment. The “Not Ordinary” theme is drizzled throughout. Broken down into four parts, the movie begins with a music video for the single “Wood Ain’t Hittin.” The music video shows Elway moving and nodding in front of a luminous San Diego skyline as planes fly overhead. The opening portion was shot and edited by Raymond Williams, while the rest was filmed by Cooper.

Elway’s narration plays over the opening of the movie. “Ordinary. Definition: something with no special or distinctive features. Normal. Shit, we always knew it wasn’t normal, but it’s crazy how we shared these same struggles, where these life-changing events was like stitches to the fabric of our everyday life. What might shock the next became just ordinary shit to us. The sirens, the drama, the silence of uncertainty. One of your parents either passed away, or doing a twelve-year bid, or just lost in the sauce. The more I think about it, this shit ain’t regular. This shit is not ordinary.”

In the opening scene, Elway shows up late for a job. Cooper makes a cameo in his own film as Elway’s boss, a Tarantino type of move. “Ain’t nobody in San Diego doing shit like this,” says Cooper, “making movies to go with their music.” Then, with the death of his “pops,” the movie takes the viewer to a scene where Elway quits his “regular” job to go back to working on the streets. The scene shows a distraught Elway trying to fight back tears when a “colleague” brings up the not-so-well-being of the rapper’s father. “Not knowing how to deal with death,” says Elway, “and having to deal with death so much. I already lost so many homies; by the time my dad died, it was just like, oh, okay.”

A little over a decade ago, Elway lost his brother to street violence. The rapper opens up about the frustrations of dealing with traumas in an environment where displaying emotions is viewed as a weakness. “I’m breathing for my brother still,” he says. “So, when my dad died, I didn’t know how to feel about it. My brother used to sock me up for crying, so that’s not ordinary either — not being able to express emotion, because you gotta be hard all the time with your boys. Who else do you talk to? You should be able to talk to your friends, but you don’t even want to. I’m sure they feel the same. It’s just a bunch of people with bottled emotions.”

During the climax of the movie, Elway’s boy, who was just released from jail, goes on to rob the studio. Although the studio-session scene is staged, this type of behavior is not uncommon. “It’s normal for friends who just get out of jail to go right back in,” says Elway. “Jail is supposed to be rehabilitation, but obviously, it’s not working. It’s probably even making it worse for some people. Of course, criminals are supposed to go to jail, but again, it isn’t working.” As the movie reaches its final robbery scene, you see the rapper and others in the studio, with calm looks on their faces that read, “Here we go again.”

With the eye of Cooper behind the camera, and the poetic wordflow by Elway, the duo is able to capture what living in a street environment is really like. Elway has always been a voice for the “grinders,” so to speak. Through his music and creative endeavors, his hope with these projects is to show others there’s another way.

Elway has been releasing new music consistently since the late 2000s, and says he has multiple projects slated for 2024. With each new release, Elway and Cooper plan to attach a mini-movie. Not Ordinary is the first of what is planned to be a series of films for the collaboration. “We’re always staying creative,” Elway says, “so we might freelance some shit that’s coming out next week. If there’s nothing to do, then we make something to do.”