{"id":96875,"date":"2021-11-08T10:20:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T16:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/?p=96875"},"modified":"2023-05-10T15:32:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T20:32:52","slug":"dr-seuss-meets-dr-dre-and-a-star-is-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/dr-seuss-meets-dr-dre-and-a-star-is-born\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Seuss meets Dr. Dre, and a star is born"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Tank\u2019s career as a performer and film producer took an unexpected turn, thanks to a Dr. Seuss book lying on the ground while he was getting ready for a rap show.<\/p>\n

The book was \u201cOne Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish<\/a>,\u201d and Tank decided it would be fun to improvise a rap by putting the words to a Dr. Dre beat.<\/p>\n

Tank, a 2006 UWM alumnus who has been rapping since he was 16, began incorporating the Dr. Seuss raps occasionally into his performances and the shows he did for children.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the crowd was enjoying it, so I decided to take it further,\u201d Tank said. He put the performances on YouTube, using his comic and acting skills to make the words in the books bounce and hop to the beats.<\/p>\n

Then the pandemic hit, and parents and children went online in droves looking for entertainment. Suddenly, the Dr. Seuss\/Dr. Dre mashups had a million hits and counting. Tank\u2019s work was being featured in Oprah and Variety magazines and on the front page of Reddit.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\u201cCorridor\u201d co-screenwriter Zach Erdmann (left), a 2013 UWM alum, talks about a scene with Wes Tank, who stars in the movie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting that, but I was really happy about it,\u201d he says. \u201cI was glad that project was able to get some traction, and it sort of spawned this whole other side tangent in children\u2019s entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

That side tangent was a deal to produce episodes for Kidoodle, an online network focused on content for children. Tank and his collaborators are taking classic children\u2019s stories, setting them to music, and adding their own art and twists to the plots. They\u2019re accessible through the website StoryRaps.com<\/a>. A five-minute episode on \u201cGoldilox and the Three Bears<\/a>,\u201d for example, features Tank in a pseudo-bear costume and extols the virtue of learning about R-E-S-P-E-C-T.<\/p>\n

Tank, who is from Dodgeville, Wisconsin, credits UWM with giving him the skills that allowed his creativity to flourish. He made his own films, trying different approaches. \u201cI made some videos where I played all the characters,\u201d he said, \u201cand my classmates thought they were pretty funny. I just really enjoyed my time at UWM because it allowed me a lot of room to breathe creatively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tank also runs a film production company called TankThink<\/a> that highlights the efforts of community organizations working to improve Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

In addition, he and a group of collaborators, many of whom got to know each other at UWM, are working on a passion project, a movie titled \u201cCorridor<\/a>,\u201d a crime caper about a murder that may or may not have happened.<\/p>\n

The movie, which is about half finished, is set in Milwaukee. \u201cUWM is the magnet that pulled everybody here. Our work has a Midwestern tone,\u201d said 2013 alum Zach Erdmann, one of the movie\u2019s writers, who notes its focus on an industrial Rust Belt city figuring out its identity. \u201cThose ideas inform the script, so it has to be filmed here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UWM alum Wes Tank found sudden success when he combined \u201cOne Fish, Two Fish\u201d with some iconic hip-hop beats and created an irresistibly catchy performance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":835,"featured_media":96881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"section":[127],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[167,344,164],"class_list":["post-96875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","section-arts-humanities","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","uwmnews-feed-alumni-association","uwmnews-feed-arts-architecture","uwmnews-feed-arts"],"yoast_head":"\nDr. Seuss meets Dr. Dre, and a star is born<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UWM alum Wes Tank found sudden success 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