More than just your favorite Instagram account, Pizzaslime is breaking convention by creating viral concepts, videos, photos, art, merch, and anything else they get their hands on. With their innovative aesthetic and insane work ethic, this duo is challenging the internet every day.
"When The Life of Pablo came out we were super inspired by it. Originally we wanted to make videos for every song on it just for the fuck of it (still want to). We’ve been wanting to do this “I Love Kanye” one specifically for awhile. The artist Luke James that helped create the original art for it is super rad and we love his style. It was awesome to bring his art to life like this."
-Pizzaslime
Directed and Produced by Pizzaslime
Original Kanye Art by Luke James
Animation by Dan Streit
get to know:
Pizzaslime
We sat down with the anonymous founders of Pizzaslime, known as Stoveman and Hobin, to talk about everything from staying independent to the progression of their brand to the Domino's Pizza Tracker. Check out the interview below, along with photos courtesy of PizzaslimeIRL.
We're actually curious, what's your favorite kinda pizza?
Stoveman: That’s like asking someone to pick their favorite child. I can say I for sure hate olives on pizza, but everything else is pretty much a go. If I had to pick an absolute favorite I’d go with pepperoni pizza. It's a classic and you can’t really fuck that up, so it's usually a guarantee anywhere. My favorite spot in L.A. is 100% Vitos.
Hobin: I’m a fan of anything that’s NY style for pizza.
What're your thoughts on the Domino's Pizza Tracker?
Stoveman: It's a beautiful thing. I don’t understand why there aren’t ones that are artist or celebrity-based. Back in the day I had the idea to do one with Diplo and even premiere an exclusive song as part of the tracker hahaha—that obviously never happened.
Hobin: Probably the greatest thing since Raya.
Where'd the name Pizzaslime come from?
Stoveman: So… I used to get stupid drunk and buy domains. Not sure why, but it was just a thing I used to do when I was really drunk. Well one day I woke up and there was a GoDaddy receipt for the domain Pizzaslime.com in my inbox—I really don’t remember why or where it came from. The name was pretty fucking random, but it sounded and looked cool, so I decided to change CrumbsCrumbsCrumbs.tumblr.com to Pizzaslime.com and the rest was history.
Hobin: Yup.
Did you guys start with your Instagram account? If not, where'd PizzaSlime originate?
Stoveman: Nah. Pizzaslime started as a tumblr dedicated to music, with no intention of ever going beyond tumblr. The content on Pizzaslime was music and videos that came from deep parts of the internet. A lot of the content was stuff that would later go on to become bigger things years later, like Disclosure, FKA Twigs, and Odd Future, to name a few. Pizzaslime was years ahead in terms of music. I go on it sometimes and go deep in the archives and things still really hold up, it was such a fucking good music site. I wish I had the time to be that deep in the internet again.
Hobin: Yeah, the Instagram kind of started as an experimental outlet for content we were making. It grew into the best way for us to build an audience, showcase our ideas, and develop the general spirit of Pizzaslime. Looking back on our early posts is pretty embarrassing—we were so bad at Photoshop, lol. I think it serves as an example of my general ethos though, which is to not doubt yourself and just do it.
You've worked on tons of different projects, from a clothing line to creative direction for music videos. Tell us the progression of PizzaSlime and how you started expanding into different mediums.
As mentioned earlier, Pizzaslime started as a blog to showcase music. We developed the Instagram and then started creating physical items—namely a sticker that was a pizza with a chain on it and also clothing. Our friends around us started picking up on what we were doing and began asking us for clothes and help on projects. One example was the music video we created for N.E.R.D’s “Squeeze Me,” which was the lead single for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and at the time, the first new song from N.E.R.D. in four years. The studio was struggling to get Pharrell to approve the music video, so we were brought in to come up with an idea. We mocked up a concept to make N.E.R.D. into SpongeBob characters and Pharrell approved the concept the next day.
Why did you choose to create your brand independently instead of joining a design group, agency, or something similar?
Stoveman: It just sorta happened. We initially started making shirts for ourselves and friends—it was stuff we thought was funny or just an interesting commentary on fashion and streetwear. There was no initial intention of becoming a brand. People kept asking us for stuff, so we eventually released a couple of things online. Influencers like Dillon Francis, Diplo, and Skrillex started wearing it and suddenly there was a demand, so people started paying attention. From there we kept growing the brand with good products and some weird, untraditional marketing methods. These things lead to us building a solid core of die hard fans that continue to ride with us. The marketing stuff we did really helped build a strong culture around the brand and provide a certain demographic of consumers with something they never really experienced before. Because it started with no intentions of becoming what it is today, it's pretty awesome to see our stuff in credible magazines and on cool websites like Vogue.
Hobin: I think our choice to be independent stemmed from the simple ambition to be able to exist independently (if that makes sense). I never thought that was something possible before. In addition, I’ve spent years working 24/7 for clients (in artist management) and I think there was a desire to find more time for myself. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that I actually spend more time on figuring out how I can help my friends than myself. I don’t think it would be a bad thing necessarily to team up with an agency. We often do that for specific projects.
Why do you like to remain anonymous?
Stoveman: Cause we aren’t hunks, hahahaha.
Hobin: It was a conscious effort to let what we were creating and presenting to exist without bias. I think one’s perspective is changed when a person is attached. We’re also ugly.
How would you describe PizzaSlime's aesthetic?
Stoveman: Shitty but unique and unafraid. A lot of the early stuff looked terrible because at the time we were self teaching ourselves Photoshop with a lot of trial and error—that sorta became the vibe and people loved it. I think the aesthetic is hilarious and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Our font looks like it was made by a 3rd grader. We aren’t married to our aesthetic when we work with other clients, which is interesting. We do super professional and clean things that you would never expect us to do.
Hobin: It’s simple and bold. We keep ideas stripped down. As Stove mentioned, we’re able to figure out things for clients that are way different than the aesthetic of Pizzaslime, and it’s actually fun to do that. For example, we created the new Porter Robinson x Madeon logo.
What is PizzaslimeIRL?
Stoveman: PizzaslimeIRL is an outlet for our personal photography and a way for people to get a glimpse into who we are, while still staying anonymous. The pictures are all shot on film with a point and shoot—they're unedited mostly because we don’t actually have any background in photography. Our style is really raw and we take pics of people and things that aren’t normally photographed, because we have access to a lot of rad people and places.
Hobin: It’s a fun hobby that allows us to archive memories in a stylistic way (whether that’s shooting behind the scenes photos of a Pac Sun campaign to churros at Coachella). It’s organically led to support from publications such as i-D Magazine, Nylon, Dazed, Paper, amongst others which has been rad. Something about film just feels awesome and real. Whenever I look at the pictures, I’m immediately back in that moment.
WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE THINGS YOU'VE SOLD?
The newest one being the "I USED TO BE COOL" dad hat, because we’ve all felt that.
The Drake Tears Mug: Its been bootlegged all over the internet, and was featured online by W Magazine, which is pretty dope and hilarious.
The Clay Aiken Shirt: This was one of the first designs. It's a gangster looking Clay Aiken shirt, inspired by a vintage Scarface shirt.
The Rick Ross Baby Tee: We made a shirt for little kids that made it appear that the kid wearing it was a shirtless Rick Ross. This shirt ended up being picked up by MTV and other places after 50 Cent posted a picture of it, which lead to some crazy Instagram beef with him and Rick Ross, hahaha.
The Planned Parenthood Shirt: We had the idea to make a planned parenthood shirt way before Marc Jacobs and anyone else. We basically set out to pick a brand whose never had a cool product and then make them something super sick. It worked and the shirt was a huge success.
The Empty Box Logo: This was a super early design. We made this when every brand possible was putting their name in the iconic Supreme box logo. It was our response to a lack of creativity and people trying to fit inside some kind of “box.” This went over peoples heads hahahaha, but we love it.
Also, what's the weirdest thing you've sold?
Stoveman: No lie….we sold really old crusty hot sauce from the back of our fridge and also an empty condom wrapper. I think the hot sauce was $10 and the empty condom wrapper was $15. When kids actually bought this stuff I was like, “Oh Fuck! Kids are even more down than I thought.” Right now we have a princess Diana beanie baby in our store for $500.
Hobin: That or the snapback hat we made with the monkey that looks like it has a dick for a nose.
HOW DO YOU ENVISION THE BRAND GROWING?
We would like to see everything we do grow to a larger scale—discovery, original art, clothing, creative, etc. It’s a constant puzzle to figure out. While we may want to scale up, it might be a smarter move to focus on one or two things. But then maybe it gets boring. We’ll just keep making shit until we’re irrelevant.
What's coming up? Do you guys have any tight parties we should know about?
We have a collaboration with Four Loko, which we will be showcasing at our booth in ComplexCon (we’ll also be throwing a party in L.A. on the Friday of that weekend). There are a few other collabs in the works that we can’t talk about yet and we also have a bunch of new designs we’re excited to drop for the holiday.
If a rad venue pops up, we’ll probably throw another party. The last one we did was in a tiny karaoke bar in Little Toyko with Diplo & Mad Decent which was awesome. We really want to throw an epic one with our friend Taco from Odd Future. Doing parties is kind of just a fun thing for us to do, we like having a good time with our friends.
pizzaslime:
The Videos
"Squeeze Me" by N.E.R.D.
co-directed by Pizzaslime
"I Can't Take It" by Dillon Francis
directed + Produced BY PIZZASLIME
Lost Party Recap from Good Enuff x Pizzaslime
party + video BY PIZZASLIME
THE ART of:
Pizzaslime
From conceptual pieces to cover art, check out a selection of Pizzaslime's art pieces below:
Featured
