Meet Jed The Sloth

We recently connected with Jed The Sloth and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jed , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I was single mother raised in a working class town. From a very young age she put me in year round sports. Athletics were my life growing up, I really knew nothing else. This yielded an opportunity to go play football for the Tulane university. Which was the perfect environment for me to flourish. All I’ve ever known is how to work hard. I truly just believe it’s a mentality. You wake up and be the person you are the entire day, no matter what you are doing. It’s just a way I carry myself.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m JedtheSloth, a music artist/film producer and founder of WHITEDIRT Productions based out of Baton Rouge, La. I’ve been writing and recording different types of music since 2008 but am most know for rap music. I started writing and performing as ‘DJEDTHVSLOTH” in 2015 after being part of a rap duo in New Orleans for about 2 years. I eventually evolved and fell in love with film making as well and in 2020 I decided to simply go by “JedtheSloth”.

I always had an interest in film making but in the early days of my rap career I would hire videographers to film me and then edit the video myself. I eventually decided I wanted to invest in film gear and build my own team and in 2016 WHITEDIRT Productions was founded. Initially WD was focused on music video, live shows, and music production. During the quarantine of 2020 I had alot of time to experiment with film making and that lead me to love cinematography and writing. I ended up writing a TV show pilot for a show titled “Down the Road a Ways” (the trailer is on WHITEDIRT Youtube) as well as another personal cinematic long term project that hopefully I can share more about soon.

In 2023 I started the “Playbaw Podcast” that started out as a platform for me to discuss various topics and has now formed into more of a guest documentary based Youtube series.

I just released my first short film “PLAYBAW” (2024). I spent a year producing what was originally a narrative based music video and developed into a film. I completely wrote, funded, cast, filmed, directed, and edited the project myself. In September I hosted a live premiere in Baton Rouge and released it October 4th on the WHITEDIRT Youtube channel.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1) Form an identity – it’s ok to not know what you want but you won’t know where you are going until you figure that part out. You need direction to know what’s the next productive decision to make. No one will know who you are if you don’t either.

2) Have a sense of aptitude – No one can help you if you can’t help yourself. Don’t ever be the person who needs their hand held and never respond to a question with “I don’t know”. It’s ok to be wrong, it’s ok to be right… but it’s never ok to be indifferent because nobody remembers those people.

3) Stay humble – No matter how good you are there’s always going to be somebody better than you. Be good to people on the way up because they will remember it on the way down.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

Learning to be patient. I started writing my project “PLAYBAW” in August of 2023. I told myself, write this as if you have an unlimited budget and then figure out how you will accomplish it after. I wrote a 40+ page video treatment and many times I was worried that if I stuck to my vision, I would never get the project finished and it would fizzle out. A little over one year later and I hosted a live premiere for the project. I faced so many challenges trying to stick to the vision I originally wrote. It costs time and MONEY to make a film and I am 100% independent with no investors. Even after all the expenses sometimes you face logistical nightmares that are out of your control. The more complex a scene got, the more high stakes the execution was. Sometimes you can only find a certain time window on a certain day to have all of your talent available, the cars, the wardrobe and the location all in the same place at the same time. Many times it would be much easier just to acquiesce and just not use the car you wanted or leave an actor out of the scene but I promised myself I wouldn’t do that with this project. I wanted to challenge myself and it has been the most rewarding experience of my artistic career yet.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Jedthesloth
• Facebook: JedtheSloth
• Linkedin: John “Jed the Sloth” Edwards
• Twitter: Jedthesloth
• Youtube: WHITEDIRT
• Soundcloud: JedtheSloth

Image Credits

WHITEDIRT Productions

Steven Lepre Photography