The 2023 Black Music Month kickoff for Ford — built around the 50th anniversary of hip hop and Ford's long place inside the culture: D-Nice, Funk Master Flex, Kelis, Nelly, Too Short, Kendrick. The Mustang as a lyric, a metaphor, a rite of passage.
The series lived at the intersection of hip hop, animation, and Black creative expression — a moment when Boondocks-style illustration, adult animation, and Disney's Soul / Moon Girl were re-entering mainstream. We used animation as the visual vocabulary because it's underrepresented for Black illustrators and because it matched the cultural moment.
The partnership · DJ Envy
Queens native Raashaun Casey — DJ Envy — as Ford brand ambassador. Host of The Breakfast Club (IHeart, Radio Hall of Fame), Hampton grad, proud Bronco Raptor + Ford GT owner, producer of his own celebrity car show. Connection to Ford was personal before it was professional: his dad loved American muscle, especially Fords. We used that thread to open a relationship Ford could build on past the campaign — into HBCU Homecoming, Revolt World, and beyond.
The framework
Out the Trunk kicked the year off inside a Ford × Black Cultural Moments framework we built: BHM (Feb), BMM (June — this campaign), BBM (August), HBCU Homecoming (Sep–Nov), Holiday (Nov–Dec). Every moment on-brand for Ford, every moment rooted in the community's actual calendar. Passionate. Authentic. Effortless. Purposeful ingenuity.