The Buzzard Times

Derrick Mobley’s “Alabama” Receives a Vintage Cartoon Treatment Ahead of Buzzard Dust: Aluminum

By EmmittOwens.com Staff | August 21, 2026

NORTHWEST ALABAMA — Derrick Mobley’s “Alabama” has a new visual treatment today, with the release of a vintage-inspired cartoon music video accompanying the song from the upcoming Buzzard Dust: Aluminum album.

The video takes a distinctly illustrated approach to its subject. Rather than a conventional performance or modern live-action footage, it moves through a stylized Southern landscape that looks pulled from an old storybook or regional print.

An Alabama flag dominates the opening imagery, hanging above mountains, wooded hills, and a winding Tennessee river. A weather-beaten cabin sits along the water beneath a large, twisted tree covered with kutzu, birds circling and perching above the scene. The imagery shifts gradually, letting individual elements come into focus while preserving the feeling of one continuous rural setting. The result is less a traditional music video than a moving piece of Southern artwork.

An Alabama Built From Familiar Images

The visual language is deliberately rustic: mountains, river, cabin, weathered wood, and flag combine into an exaggerated but recognizable portrait of the state, drawing on imagery long associated with rural Alabama and the broader Appalachian South. Heavy outlines, muted earth tones, and an aged, textured look give the video the feel of an old illustration brought to life — movement comes mainly through camera motion and shifting perspective rather than polished modern animation.

That choice gives “Alabama” an unusual identity: the song isn’t simply accompanied by animation — the landscape is the presentation. It’s a fitting approach for a track on Buzzard Dust: Aluminum, an album rooted in the larger fictional world of Buzzard Dust Mixtapes, where old-fashioned Americana imagery, fictional performers, and the broadcasts of WDAR 99.6 Dead Air Radio frequently overlap.

The Song Already Had an Audience

Today’s release arrives after “Alabama” had already begun circulating across several platforms: roughly 2,100 plays on TikTok, about 400 on SawSall Radio, a couple hundred views via a short on the Buzzard Dust Mixtapes YouTube channel, and more than 500 views on Facebook. For an independent release, that’s an audience that had already encountered the song in several places before today’s visual rollout — making this less an introduction than another stage in the song’s release.

From Radio Play to a Visual Release

The release fits the larger presentation style around Buzzard Dust Mixtapes and WDAR 99.6 Dead Air Radio, where individual songs often exist as pieces of a bigger fictional world — alongside radio programming, characters, and visual art — rather than isolated recordings.

“Alabama” follows that approach while staying visually simple. There’s no elaborate narrative; the scenery carries the mood instead. The flag, mountain range, Tennessee river, and isolated cabin establish a sense of place before closer shots of the trees and birds create something more intimate. The vintage illustration style ties it all together into a world that feels intentionally removed from the present day.

Part of Buzzard Dust: Aluminum

“Alabama” appears on Buzzard Dust: Aluminum, out September 1, 2026 — another installment in the Buzzard Dust Mixtapes universe, blending original songwriting with fictional performers, visual artwork, and the ongoing WDAR 99.6 Dead Air Radio concept.

For Mobley, “Alabama” now exists in all of those forms at once: a recorded song, a radio play, short-form clips, and now a full visual presentation. Rather than making Alabama look glamorous or contemporary, the video leans into something older and more timeless — the mountains, the water, the cabin, the flag, the wildlife.

A Small Piece of Alabama, Drawn by Hand

There’s something fitting about presenting a song called “Alabama” through illustration rather than a conventional music video. No crowds, no stages — just a camera moving through a quiet Southern setting, revealing it piece by piece: a flag in the foreground, mountains in the distance, a river winding through the valley, a cabin beside the water, a bird watching from a dead tree.

It’s an intentionally old-fashioned picture of Alabama. That seems to be exactly the point.

The new video for Derrick Mobley’s “Alabama” is available now, with Buzzard Dust: Aluminum arriving September 1.

Watch “Derrick Mobley — Alabama” on YouTube

 

Derrick Mobley — “Alabama”

Music video released August 21, 2026

From the upcoming album:

Buzzard Dust: Aluminum

September 1, 2026