Perry Porter & Paolo Escobar
Home Of The Mighty
"After a year of working with film and production, Spekulation is back on the mic with his upcoming release of “Home Of The Mighty.” The song features a 20-piece horn section performing over a synth-driven, West Coast rap instrumental that pays homage to the Northwest’s varied musical history. The powerful and perfectly pieced production is no surprise effort from Spekulation, who spent the last year scoring for the short film Enemy Within, an official selection at the Cinedans International Film Festival, and promoting his instrumental album, Doc Watson.
“Home Of The Mighty” also features up-and-coming emcee Perry Porter and vocals by Paolo Escobar.
The song is a follow-up to his hit song “Bout That Action,” which Pitchfork described as “probably the best song I’ve heard in 2014” in their Mixdown feature. The instrumental received over 200,000 plays. Then, Prometheus Brown of hip hop duo Blue Scholars picked it up and the song “This Ain’t A Seahawks Anthem” took over the city during Super Bowl.
It’s clear that Spekulation is a Northwest gem, “Home Of The Mighty” is an inside perspective on where he and his collaborators work and play.
For this track we go for a bit of west coast hip-hop, delving into a bit of the local talent here In Seattle. I recently had the chance to catch up to the key players:
What was the inspiration behind the track?
SPEKULATION: The Northwest has had a great year, with gay marriage, socialists being elected to the Seattle city council, marijuana legalization, the Seahawks winning the Superbowl, Macklemore collecting hella Grammies... So Nate Omdal (the composer and instrumental arranger) and I started working on the instrumental with that in mind, trying to build something that captured the confidence we felt in the city at that moment, but also something that paid tribute to a lot of the traditions of Northwest music. We knew we wanted someone with a voice powerful enough to rival those horns, so we asked Paolo to get on the hook, and I'd heard Perry do great work with Big Band-sounding material before so I wanted to push him a little more in that direction and he was kind enough to oblige.
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