Dear friends,
Happy Earth Day and New Moon 🌑
With the intention of manifesting freedom, I wanted to share the music video for Y ⛑. This is the 10th episode in a hyperreality series that I have created and performed. Y features all original footage and was shot mostly in quarantine and revisits characters and references from each of the nine previous videos, filmed since October 2016.
You can watch the 10-part story below, and here at NEO10Y.SPACE/cinema
I wanted to share this breakdown of all my videos, and some details on synchronicities and symbolism up until this point, which is not fully exhaustive, but a start!
Hope it helps show that creating authentic art with love energy / intention is an awesome way to connect with (and document a connection with) the universe.
Before my viral Trump film, I actually released a video for Amerikkka which goddess Scarlett Stack edited back in Summer 2016 which speaks volumes about the climate back then and draws symbolism between the apocalypse and rise of supremacy. This was actually the film and song which started the first wave of trolls and death threats. I had to switch the comments off.Â
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My first proper music video was The Kid That Killed Tr*mp which featured Amerikkka, Janis and Wild West. This went half-viral and got short of a million views, which also being deleted by multiple platforms and resulted in a tonne of hate mail from the right wing.Â
It was filmed in NY with a videographer that still doesn’t want to be named for fear of association on the day of the first primaries. The narrative established in this video went on to evolve the symbolism of the entire series.Â
It also resulted in a NEO 10Y a Gallery show at Soho Review in London on November 25th 2016, which Givenchy sponsored and we had a city-wide blackout except the gallery that night – iconic, we stan.
I followed this up with Echo Chamber which saw the start of a solitary confinement theme which evolved over the course of the videography. The hyper reality construct started to unveil itself here with Cinema 4D segments designed with Diangular and the surrealist car park scenes shot by Oz Thakkar with the white out lenses. Billboard magazine premiered this video along with a piece about the Tr*mp film.
Then we saw Janis and Double, both released on the same date – 01.12.17. I was in NY when they came out and I quit music that day and got high and went to sex parties and maybe died, who knows, but this was the peak of some of my “closest friends” attempting to bully me out of making music. I still have PTSD from this, hopefully my vindication will come before a Grammy for the sake of my mental health.
Anyway, Double saw NEO 10Y sent to Mars into isolation (I know, a prophet) and was the most complexed edit we did to date – thanks to the genius of Alex Lord. You can enjoy the duality of two whole entire characters. We are both really proud of this video.
Janis saw the evolution of futurism and features a cameo thanks to Rolls-Royce who lent us a brand new car for the weekend to shoot the film which set off this kinda dystopian technological reality and more of a performative part of the series. So many of us made this video it was Alex, Oz, Calum, Phellipe and myself – a legit crew.
I only wish we had a video for Facts Only as it is so intertwined lyrically with Disidentification – maybe one day.
The sonic evolution into mainstream pop icon started to really take form with the two-part interconnected release of Poems To Fuck To and Dopamine. This is when I started tipping into the algorithm on Spotify thanks to Chani Nicholas and my live shows were going down really well. At the end of the Dopamine video, you can see me performing in Hollywood.
The sage-ing for world peace started with the tunnel scene in Poems, and I took it to protest Trump in London too (here’s a photo from VICE / i-D), stairs and upward movement represent dragging ourselves/humanity into the future. Visual references of the mannequin and overall darkness in my art is connecting with that which is unseen in the physical world – the dark matter of the universe, decoding the darkness and loving the darkness.
Then came the rather iconic and Paper Magazine premiered video for Reality Check directed by Rob Ulitski, seeing the introduction of a bunch of moods and taking on a higher evolved consciousness level for NEO 10Y. Reality Check was the first song properly cried during the writing of, and I always think of is as my first fully conscious track.
On 10/10/2019 came Stan Yourself, shot between London and LA and showing the dystopia to utopia narrative and juxtaposition through colour, theme and placement. I’m also performing to giant fans in the dark scenes shot by Oz. Billboard wrote an amazing article about it and it was the first time that mainstream media acknowledged the synchronicities and consciousness within my art – thank you Ilana Kaplan for that.
This video also contains the biggest spiritual synchronicity, where Marc Jordan Cohen and I shot on Stanley Street by purely documented coincidence. We only realised when looking back at the footage. It is clearly shown in the video too! Blows my mind to this day. Marc is a divine being and I am so grateful that he was part of this process with me.
Last month, I released a performance video for ILY premiered by Billboard in an article referencing our connection with the universe (we stan), which I wanted to showcase the rawness of the song produced with Teddy Jackson. It’s also the first time I rap in Hindi and the use of sitar (Tommy Khosla) and tabla feels really true to my ancestral heritage. I feel like my energy as a performer has evolved and I wanted to showcase that too and just be sexy and not too psycho…for once.
10th and bringing us to today, the interconnected and quarantine shot visual for Y which was also just listed as COLORS song of the day and Paper’s Bops of The Weekend. Bring on the credibility.
A sizeable synchronicity here is that the smoke bomb footage with the mask was shot by Blaise Singh for his documentary back in August that didn’t make the cut. Since then I went and came back from LA / NY and released two videos and three songs. Then suddenly we are in the middle of a corona virus quarantine and this footage comes back into my life to add value to this piece in the most visually authentic way possible, unreal.
The video for Y references each of the previous videos in the following ways and kinda comes full circle 1 through 10.
Kid That Killed Tr*mp – Mickey and Trump – shot in NY
Janis – Smoke Bomb
Echo Chamber – Car Park
Double – Insanity
Poems To Fuck To – Sage
Dopamine – Mannequin
Reality Check – Jeep
Stan Yourself – Guitar – shot in London and LA
ILY – Footage / Bangles
Additional references are the black acid tongue from my interview with L’Officiel and the anonymous mask from NEO 10Y’s debut artwork. Wild.
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