Mike Carson & Mike Waxx for Interview Magazine

The minds behind ILLROOTS and newly-implemented IllAmerica clothing line, Mike Carson and Mike Waxx have both made quite the name for themselves before even being able to (legally) buy their first alcoholic drink. At 19 and 20 years of age (respectively), in addition to running one of the premier hip-hop blogs as well as jump-starting a clothing collection, the two Chicago cats have also made impressive strides in the realm of videography. Having shot videos for Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music outlet and developing a noticeably close relationship with rapper Big Sean, the come-up has been nothing short of rapid and impressive for these guys. In accordance, Interview Magazine recently caught up with the now New Yorkers to speak on how it all got started. See an excerpt below and follow here to check the piece in full.

It’s funny—we linked up with Big Sean as college students. I remember one weekend in September of 2010, Sean had a show in Ohio, and we decided we would just go and try to connect with him, because this was before we knew him. So we got on the Megabus, went to the show, ended up meeting Sean and he was into what we were doing. Like two weeks later, his manager at the time reached out and said they wanted to do a music video for a song on Sean’s mixtape with Chiddy Bang. We had to throw this video together really quick, and we ended up shooting it on our friends’ rooftop, which was really spontaneous, but we ended up making it work. Now the video has like 10 million views, and that was just something we did in college.