The Journal Gazette catches up with the My City movement and features an image from our upcoming follow up project “Live It Up,” with artist Nyzzy Nyce:
It was more than a year ago that Smith and Samel, both of Fort Wayne, were part of A Better Fort Organization’s “HipHop4theCity” campaign, which united local hip-hop artists to produce “My City” – an homage to Fort Wayne.
The campaign quickly became a trending topic for the city’s millennials after a music video was released in February 2012. As the video spread across social media sites, it caught the attention of national websites such as “The Atlantic Cities,” which asked in the headline, “Can a rap video make Fort Wayne cool?”
As it turns out, yes it can.
From a city with a little more than 250,000 people, “My City” has nearly 240,000 views on YouTube. That’s not including Vimeo views and Samuel’s “national version” remix, which has garnered 10,000 views. Smith says that song has been downloaded more than 2,000 times on iTunes.
“I think everybody came together and proved a point,” Samuel says. “It’s more than music, there are brains behind it.”