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This week's roundup of best videos is brought to us largely by hip-hop and R&B, with an array of artists coming out with soulful, surprising visuals. J. Cole used puppies as a metaphor to tell us about his First Time (so much more adorable and less gross than you're thinking). Alabama Shakes went off world. Tish Hyman showed us her hometown, and Son Little dreamed of a world where black kids can grow up to be men and women instead of statistics. So it wasn't always happy, but it's damn sure worth your time to watch. If you need a little pick-me-up from the realness, though, we've also got a love story with aliens and some really repressed Amish kids who will do anything for a good time. Variety is in the spice of life, and this week is hot. (And shouts out to Eryn Allen Kane, whose beautiful video for "Have Mercy" got edged out of the Top 10, but is still best-of material in our hearts.)
Well played, J. Cole.
This is like the movie Rize but in music video form. We're so ready for crumping to circle back and re-enter the cultural conversation.
Why wait for Rumspringa when you can just go to a barn rave and snort a relative's ashes straight from the urn all night?
It's that thing where you're carrying out a drug deal but the drugs are actually aquatic alien facehuggers. You know?
Just, damn. Tish Hyman is really bringing the soul in this beautiful black-and-white chronicle of the New Yorkers that make up her "Subway Art."
With friends like these, who needs serial killers?
So, yeah, this is a pretty typical "boys mobbin'" video, but Skepta sets himself apart from the mandem pretty clearly. He's got that It factor. We just want to keep watching him and he's not even doing anything. For that, Skepta is one of our best of the week.
When you think of Alabama Shakes you totally think of being stranded in a ship that went way off course somewhere in the 'Verse, right? Alabama Shakes apparently thinks of the same thing! Get lost in space with some soulful rock.
This is another case of the lyric video breaking through to exceptional status. This could have been just words flashing across a screen, but instead we get a gory comic to tell us the tale of the song. Approved.
Well, we definitely cried.
