Mack Maine
Photo: MTV News
As we reflect on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, MTV Jams is paying special tribute to survivors of the disaster with "Louisiana Love." All Sunday (August 29) on the channel, you'll see videos from New Orleans artists. MTV Jams is celebrating the strength of the people in the Gulf Coast rather than making it a day of mourning.
One of the videos fans will see today is courtesy of director Scoob Doo and the Young Money family. It's called "I'm From New Orleans" and stars YM president Mack Maine. Fellow N.O. natives Lil Wayne, Lil Chuckee and the Birdman have cameos in the vid.
"The New Orleans video is basically a song with some guys from New Orleans: Lucci Lou and T@," Mack explained to MTV News. Mack Mizzle was in New York to visit Lil Wayne at Rikers Island. "The name of the song is 'I'm From New Orleans.' I got pretty New Orleans on my verse. The video is pretty raw. It's low-budget, capturing the raw and real of New Orleans. It's a good look. It'll make the city proud and kinda let other people see our heritage and basically how we live, our way of life."
The Cash Money/ Young Money family obviously has a well-documented history of showing us New Orleans in videos, starting back in the '90s with such videos as Juvenile's "Ha" and five years ago with Lil Wayne's "Fireman." However, since Katrina's destruction hit, many of the signature landmarks are no longer standing in the city.
"I was just in town for my birthday party, and I rode through the neighborhoods to see the new developments that are coming up and what's being torn down," Mack said. "A lot of the uptown part, the projects are basically gone, like the Magnolia, some of the Calliope are still up. They're trying to give the city a new face. It's a lot of memories gone at the end of the day. But we basically shot uptown, we caught the Superdome. Uptown, my little brother has a house. We caught some footage by him. We caught some of Hollygrove. The guys on the song are from New Orleans East. So we caught the East in there too. We tried to capture all the city. I don't think we went on the West Bank, but shouts to the West Bank as well. Uptown, downtown and the East."
Mack says his song co-stars, Lucci Lou and T@, have worked with the YM family before, and the two are just stepping up to the spotlight now.
"Lucci Lou, he was on the No Ceilings mixtape," Mack explained. "T@ is one of the guys who works for Wayne. He started messing around with the rap and started making beats. That's how the song came. He hit me when we was in the studio. He hit me, like, 'Pull up some of the beats we made on the I Am Music Tour.' I don't write; I freestyle. I went in there and went from the verse to the hook. I didn't know if it was nice at first. It was like 5 in the morning. I was tired. They called me like, 'It's a hit.' I listened to it two days later and said, 'It's a nice song.' They did their verse, and here we are."
Share your memories of Hurricane Katrina in the comments.
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