- Alex Granata
"It's a very immature Granata," explained Alex Granata when queried about his March 2013 video for "Palm Trees."
The clip clocks in at just under two minutes long, but it hilariously finds the 22-year-old Tampa-based emcee very cooly biking his way around picturesque Davis Islands with a little red wagon (complete with video vixen).
"We don't usually shoot videos on [there], but that was a perfect spot for the vibes," he told CL. "The water, the palm trees, old people to confuse." Granata has also filmed another video there (last May's ridiculously catchy "Say Whaddup!"), but he says it represents a different time in his artistic existence.
"I somewhat outgrew the music I was making in that stage of my life," he said. "I couldn't really write proper hooks, [but] now I'm focused on making records — not just raps."
That's a good thing for Tampa's already thriving hip hop scene too as Granata preps a new album, which is about 95-percent complete. A new single and video for that album's first track — "Tea Party" — is set to drop any week now, but at least we've got this video to keep us happy until then.
Check it out below, then grab a free download of the track — produced by German producer FloFilz — at Granata's Bandcamp.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2014.