Mouse Powell's latest video plays like a real-time tour around some of the Valley's unofficial historic landmarks. From sunshine, palm trees, and his "first show at the Modified," "Holding Home" off of his debut album, Where It's Cloudy, chronicles the young MC's time growing up in the Copper State.
Set to a laidback sample of Simply Red's 1985 chart topper, "Holding Back the Years," video producer Danny McManus, founder of fledgling production house D-Mak Productions, follows Mighty Mouse around town as he cruises the streets on his skateboard and revisits old haunts.
Even Tucson gets some love with footage of a Casino Del Sol pool party where bouncing bikini-clad babes strut their stuff to the Make Sense-produced track.
"Danny is the one who really pressed me to do a video," Powell says. "I really didn't want to do it at first, but honestly it came out so awesome."
Check out the music video for yourself after the jump and hear why the AZ anthem almost wasn't so.
I didn't want it to pigeonhole me as just being an Arizona artist, which is what I thought it kind of would do. It's fucked up, but a lot of people on the outside looking in, are really anti-Arizona for some reason. I think it has a lot to do with how the news portrays us and a lot of other stuff. But I didn't want it to pigeonhole me [as an artist] that can't go anywhere from here. Danny talked some sense into me, though.He kept pushing me and pushing me to do it. And he did such a good job of conveying the fact that Arizona is not how it's conveyed in most Arizona songs. It's not too gangster, it's not this crazy political, fucken' land where everybody doesn't like what's going on out here. For the most part I think people are really cool out here and they get along.
It's a cool place to grow up and I love it out here. [Danny] likes it out here [too] and he's from New York, so he really wanted to portray what it was that he likes about [Arizona]. So we set out on a mission to do that.
Powell is already working on a follow-up to last years release, with a turn he hopes to drop at the end of the summer. "People who have been to the live shows recently have heard a lot of the new stuff we've been doing," he says. "I haven't titled it yet because I don't want to end up writing material just to fit the title."
