Most people in the world of music videos may not recognize the name Nahala Johnson, but lately, they’ve recognized his nom de film: Mr. Boomtown. The Port Arthur native (he now splits his time between Houston and Dallas) is a nominee for the BET Hip Hop Awards’ Director of the Year. The show will be held October 10th in Atlanta.
He’s nominated for his work on two videos that really couldn’t be any more different from each other — Slim Thug’s “I Run,” with its breathtaking night-time aerial views of Houston, underground clubs, bling, and wads of cash; and Mike Jones’s “Next to You,” which features the aforementioned Mr. Jones and his sweetie shopping at Greenspoint Mall and eating Corn Flakes in unbridled domestic bliss.
But after ten years of producing videos for the likes of Scarface, Bun B, Paul Wall, and Mya, Mr. Boomtown is ready for just about anything. We caught up with him this week, but only for a brief phone chat — as you can imagine, a fellow with the name of “Mr. Boomtown” has quite the busy schedule.
We started by asking him what Slim and Mike differed in their approaches to making videos.
Mr. Boomtown: With Slim, it was more about talking
more to the label, then actually Slim about the concept….Because at
that particular time, the label that he was signed to was actually
trying to get another director because they were just trying to put me
in a box as like a southern director. So they were trying to go for a
different look and all of that.
But Slim…was like, “No, he
[shot] my other videos, we want him to do this video,” you know,
“forget what y’all are talking bout, Boomtown is going to do the
video”….The whole deal with that video was, we were going to actually
give them something different than they would normally see from a Slim
Thug or a Houston artist. We were going to show Houston in a different
way. Not just only like the gritty and…the hood, you know….[Mike
Jones] was totally different from Slim, because he had his whole ideas
in his head. He basically pretty much just laid it all out, and all I
had to do was just bring it to life.
HB: The videos are totally different from
each other….Mike Jones’s is not like a typical hip-hop video.
He’s, like, shopping at the mall and drinking orange juice….What was
it like, shooting something like that, that’s so different?
It was actually fun. It was quite challenging, because it [was like]
shooting a R&B video. It had an R&B feel….As a director, you
don’t want to get caught in that box….You don’t want to be, like,
typecast as only a rap director, as only a hip-hop director. You want
to be able to cross over and shoot the big R&B videos or the rock
videos or the big pop videos.
Mr. B. said his next project was a killer pool-side party video for
Gucci Mane, which we’re looking forward to seeing — mostly because we
like watching videos at work.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2009.
