Not too long ago, I wrote about Manny Sanchez’s awesome song “Nikes” after my homie put me on, and I’ve been bumping it ever since. While it might be an ode to one of his favorite Nike silhouettes, the Cortez, it also shows listeners a different side of Manny that is much more caring and thoughtful than he might have portrayed himself in the past. Whether that’s what you take away from the track on your own or you just enjoy the dreamy, wistful aesthetic that is brought to life throughout the song, there’s no denying the fact that it’s an all-out hit.
Considering I’ve been playing it repeatedly since it came out a couple of weeks ago, I was even more excited to find out that there is a brand-new music video directed by HOLYMANNY and shot by GOYARD GARY, two underground legends in their own right. I was excited to even hear that there was a music video, but after I actually watched it, I was left almost entirely speechless because of how creative and inventive it actually was.
Opening up, the camera is at ground level and focusing on one pair of black Cortez’s and one pair of pink ones. Captions breathe life into the two inanimate objects, and they reveal the fact that the black pair’s name is Cortez, obviously, and the pink pair’s name is Corteza. Cortez tells her that he loves her, and she reciprocates the feeling by promising to never leave him. This legitimately lasts for a week before she decides to leave Cortez for a bigger sized shoe, this time running into the laces of the comically named pair of shoes, Air Force Juan.
Once the beat drops and Manny begins to sing, there are full-body shots shown of him sitting on the windowsill, looking out of one of the windows in his house, and hanging out at a park. Throughout the visual, however, there are moments that flashback to the original storyline, one of which shows a stack of hundred-dollar bills being shoved in his sock right in front of Corteza, prompting her to exclaim the fact that she messed up and made the wrong decision.
Eventually, things get violent between Cortez and Juan which makes them bring weapons to a fight which ends unfavorably for both pairs of shoes. Beyond all of this, my favorite scenes come when Manny is laying on his back in the middle of a dirt-covered patch of land, and all around him, there are human-sized imprints of the zig-zagged soles that are left behind from the soles of Cortez’s.
While this portion might be a little thing and could even be overlooked by some viewers, I was a massive fan of the fact that they decided to include this, and it just made the attention to detail aspect of the visual that much more obvious. If you’ve ever read my articles before, you know I’m a huge fan of substance in a music video as opposed to random shots that mean nothing and don’t contribute anything to the song itself. Manny and his team definitely delivered big with this offering, and even though I was a fan of the song right off the bat, I’m an even bigger fan of the music video. Whether you’ve heard the song yet or not, this music video is a can’t-miss new offering from Manny Sanchez, so please take some time and treat yourself as soon as you possibly can.