Hip Hop, the drug culture and mind-bending visuals are no strangers. Here’s a list celebrating instances of UK Hip Hop talent taking that ball and running with it.
Dabbla feat Jam Baxter: Vomit
This one is a mindfuck and a half to look at. According to our resident videographer, it looks like Vomit was shot with the higher frame rate used for slow motion but then wasn’t slowed down. The effect is a visual simulation for the soberest brain of the kind of sharply contrasted, flickering perspective on surroundings that you might find yourself staring down the barrel of if you emerged nonplussed into the daylight after taking MDMA and ketamin for 12 hours. In addition to the artificially replicated sense of chem induced brain overload, the video boasts some sweet panda torture, dilated pupils, neat vodka swigging and Dabbla being sick at the end.
Video Credit: Vikki Digby-Johns
Earthworm Grim and Goosewater: Bleed Bleed
While it would have been a load less varied, this list could have been sourced entirely from shuffling one YouTube channel. The back catalogue of Manchester’s Blah Records has way more than 10 videos that look like along with a big bag of mushrooms, creative control may have been given to a complete space cadet. Putting out messy, kaleidoscopic videos that look like they’re intentionally shoddily shot on a camcorder from 1990 is something of a trademark of the label. This one by Earthworm Grim (One of Lee Scott’s alter egos) makes for particularly perverse watching. There’s not actually a whole lot going on in this at all. Man in mask cut out of a bedsheet, clutching a teddy, ambles around the undergrowth at dusk like a mentalist. That’s it. There’s just something bare creepy about the final product.
Video Credit: Directed by Lee Scott Filmed by Lyza
Task Force: My Last Trip
Admittedly, a lot of what is weird as shit about this video is the instrumental and Chester’s lyric itself. There’s something quite David Lynch circa 1977 about the monochrome shooting style of the video though. Coupled with P’s pranged out performance in all its dribbling, lizard eating, floor hugging, door humping, gimp mask wearing glory, this all makes for a suitably unsettling watch.
Video Credit: Farma G
Everything by Strange U
The clues in their name. Picking one would be arbitrary. So, to choose which video to embed we wrote the names of all of them on our wall, blindfolded a child and made him throw darts at them until he hit one. No infants were harmed in the selection of this visual.
Video Credit: Jimi
Lunar C – Chicken
Bradford’s vulgar jokester, Lunar C, got particularly odd with the video for Chicken. The result looks like what would have happened if he’d directed the sequence from Requiem for a Dream where the drug addled mum completely loses her shit. All centred around a seriously unsavoury dinner with C’s seemingly possessed family as they dig into a roast that consists mainly of pills, the video for Chicken comes complete with unnerving gazes, twitchy faces, twisted lighting and some mind warping wallpaper. Watch out for the exchange between everyone after the tune ends, as it’s the most bizarre bit of the whole thing.
Video Credit: Kill Money
Check out 6-10 on the next page