Sure it wasn’t a top political honcho from a distant island-nation under threat of military invasion, but it was Austin Richard Post, also known as Post Malone, the voice behind various big, bulbous hit records over the past few years, from “Rockstar” to “Psycho” to various other strained collaborations that have also landed in the top 10 over the past few years. Regardless, at any rate, the recognizable pop rapper could have been found on Friday, on a particularly quiet stretch of Greene Avenue, within walking distance of the Myrtle-Wyckoff L station. It appeared that Malone had turned to the neighborhood as a location for filming something.
According to Travis O’Brien, a longtime video editor who now runs a local post-production outfit called the Bushwick Art Department (“Love the community; even named my business after the neighborhood as you can see,” O’Brien tells me), Post Malone appeared to have shown up for a video shoot at a recently abandoned house, surrounded by a flank of casually-dressed members of his entourage.
The group had been discovered gathered around one of those large, blank-white trailers that, in New York often, generally tend to signify the presence of a local film production of some kind. It had been a rainy afternoon, but per O’Brien, the hit voice behind “Sunflower” seemed surprisingly nonplussed. The recognizable face — notable for its abundant variety of facial tattoos — seemed unconcerned with being spotted.
“It was really crazy that not many people knew he was there,” O’Brien told me.
It’s not Posty’s first time making headlines in Brooklyn, however. Shortly before the pandemic, Page Six reported that Malone spent his New Year’s Eve at Baby’s All Right, where he spent the night “handing out $100 bills to any of the servers lucky enough to be waiting on his table.”
Images taken by Travis O’Brien from the Bushwick Art Department.
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