It's been a productive few weeks for local hip-hop, giving us new video releases from local rappers Mav, Trap and Mr. Miranda, three of the busiest MCs in the Valley scene.
Mav is still promoting his 2010 release, Independent Hustlin', which recently won the "Best Album" award in the Phoenix Hip-Hop Online Awards. The second video from the album is called "Me Against the World" and was directed by fellow PHX Hip-Hop Online award winner Carlos Berber, Jr.
Trap, who won the "Best Mixtape" category for I Never Sleep, recently released a follow-up mixtape, titled Died & Gone 2 Heaven. Trap's new video is for the song "Dope Man" (not to be confused with the NWA song of the same name).
Mr. Miranda is hard at work on his forthcoming Rick James tribute mixtape. The video for "Lost Direction" comes from Miranda's EP with Jimmy Nelson, The J&D Experience, one of New Times top local releases of 2010.
Check out all three videos with comments from each artist after the break...
Mr. Miranda - Lost Direction from Dave Miranda on Vimeo
Mr. Miranda on "Lost Direction": This is the video to my record "Lost Direction" off my latest project, The J & D Experience, and the reason I chose this particular song is because it is definitely one of my favorites off the project, so I felt it was only right to put the visuals for it.
The record itself is a li'l dark, so therefore we wanted to capture the same feel for the video. Unfortunately, there weren't any big booty girls and a bunch of expensive cars with tons of money being flashed - haha.
The video has been receiving a lot of great feedback, so I'm happy that people can see that Arizona does have a REAL hip hop scene.
Mav on "Me Against the World": It's a song about how our scene doesn't support its stars. It's a song about how you can be huge outta state and come back home and be another crab in the barrel.
Trap on "Dope Man": "Dope Man" for me is just representing being fresh. You can be the Dope Man because of dope, but you can also be dope because you the man.
