R&B singer's new music video to feature locations in Cape

Something unusual was happening at the Marquette building Friday evening. Or at least unusual for Cape Girardeau.

The newly renovated building on Broadway was part of a music video being filmed over the weekend. A video which will also feature the Show Me Center, Hutson's Fine Furniture, Academic Hall and possibly the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge.

While he may not be a big name currently, the musician shooting the video, R&B singer Breeze, is hoping this video for his song "I Want to Know" helps change that.

He plans to send a tape of it to BET, MTV and VH1 and see if anything develops.

"My main goal is to get exposure, and hopefully a record deal will come out of it," he said of the video.

Breeze is a Cape Girardeau native who graduated from Central High School and attended Southeast Missouri State University, although he was known as Brese Squires in those days.

While the 31-year-old Squires grew up singing in choirs in church and school, it wasn't until a talent show at the university in 1992 that he performed on his own and found out that he liked it.

In 1997, Squires moved to St. Louis and started working in security, which eventual led him to work with rap star and St. Louis native Nelly and other area musicians. Squires said associating with them made him want to pursue his own musical career.

Unlike Nelly, Squires is strictly an R&B singer who focuses on slow ballads.

In 2001, Squires produced his first single, "Let it Bounce," which he performed during the university's 2002 homecoming celebrations.

"It gave me a boost to take it further," he said of the single. "It got a lot of good responses."

Last year he was one of five in St. Louis chosen to attend the DemoFast Break Expo in Chicago, where there were representatives from major recording studios and record companies.

Squires did not secure a record deal through the expo, although one label did show initial interest, but he is confident that his continuing hard work will eventually pay off.

"I realized how competitive [the business] was when I went to the music expo," Squires said. "But I've always been told it takes just that one song to do it."

"I've been doing this for almost four years and I've been getting closer and closer. I think perseverance is the most important thing. Now I'm doing my first music video, I couldn't have imagined that one or two years ago."

Helping Squires in his attempts at musical success are the video's directors, James LeBine and Candace Banks, both students at Southeast Missouri State University and members of the university's video services department.

"I gave them the idea of what I wanted and let them run with it," Squires said of the video.

kalfisi@semissourian.com

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