Best Music Videos of the Month

Featuring Frank Ocean, Run The Jewels, and Angel Olsen

nikes music video
Image via YouTube
nikes music video

August has been an emotionally draining month in music videos. That's mostly thanks to Frank Ocean, who ended four years of silence with an experimental video stream. The floodgates really opened, however, with Frank's video for "Nikes," the only song off Blonde to receive the visual  treatment. Run The Jewels, meanwhile, had some fun at the expense of the American political trash fire—they guested on  DJ Shadow's "Nobody Speak" and stuffed their lyrics into politicians' mouths.

In between, we were treated to an antebellum drama from Mick Jenkins, another great visual from clipping., and more psychedelic animation than we knew what to do with. Here are August's best music videos. 

13. YG ft. Drake & Kamaiyah - "Why You Always Hatin"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Joe Weil

When all the featured guests show up for a song's video, it makes a difference. When those featured guests are Drake and Oakland's rising star Kamaiyah, it makes a hit. The video for "Why You Always Hatin'?" doesn't re-write the music video rule book, but it checks off every requirement with style and grace.

Riding top-down in a ludicrously expensive car? Check.

Reckless champagne pours? Check.

Rare sportswear? Check, in the form of YG's retro Todd Gurley  jersey. 

Kamaiyah has taken to fame especially well—she's already getting foot rubs from model types, wearing a silk bathrobe like she was born in it. Great song, great video. 

12. Salute - "Storm"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Raine Allen-Miller

Good dancing will always and forever be the quickest way to our hearts. You could have nothing but a blank wall and some space, but a great dancer will find a way to bring the space to life. 

There's a lot more than blank space in Salute's video for "Storm." We never leave the gold-curtained set, which also serves as a dancefloor/lounge/living room for the dancers that fill its space. The video was released in a time of civil unrest for the U.K., and director Raine Allen-Miller made sure to convey a message of togetherness for "Storm"—an African-British woman is the video's lead, and she's clad entirely in the British flag.

"This video is a celebration of the incomparable mix of cultures and the unique blend of people that makes this country so incredible," Allen-Miller said. "What makes Great Britain so great."

11. Jabbar ft. Snubnose Frankenstein - "Riches"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Morian Thomas

It's easy to fuck up a video like this—animation is hard enough as it is, but to lay it over live-action footage requires the kind of wireframing and painstaking tinkering that puts a crick in your neck. That didn't happen this time around—the "Riches" video is an excellent take on the lo-fi, DIY video. Jabbar and Snubnose Frankenstein create a new world in a convenience store, unspooling their addictive flows between snack aisles and walk-in freezers. It's further proof you don't need a sound stage to make a winning video in 2016—just a great song and a dedicated team. 

10. Night Lovell - "Contraband"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: SCPP

​We love this kid Night Lovell. The Ontario-based rapper makes some of the toughest music out right now, but his on-screen persona isn't about flexing and grimaces. Lovell knows the music's good, and he's happy to just nod and smirk at the camera to let you know he knows you know. Just give him a couple of orange sweatshirts, some forest, and a Mercedes—your video's all but finished.

"Contraband" is one of the standout tracks from Lovell's Red Teenage Melody, an album that has gotten even better with time. Now that he's cheesing for the cameras, it's only a matter of time before Lovell takes off. 

9. Kanye West ft. Post Malone & Ty Dolla $ign - "Fade"

teyana taylor fade video

8. Angel Olsen - "Sister"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Directors: Angel Olsen & Conor Hagen 

Angel Olsen's new album is fast approaching, and she's been generous with sneak peeks: this is the third single we've heard thus far, and the second video. There's something so complete about her visuals—for "Sister," we follow Olsen through the California desert and its many cactus flowers, then up Los Angeles' steep hills, accompanied throughout by  the contours of her statuesque visage. It's more than eight minutes long, but Olsen's music has the ability to make time feel obsolete: "Sister" gives a feeling we can't shake, and her album My Woman is sounding incredible. 

7. Clipping. - "Air 'Em Out"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Carlos Lopez Estrada

Spirits are present in clipping.'s  video for "Air 'Em Out." We open on frontman Daveed Diggs settling in to another shift at his jumpsuit-requiring place of employment. As the beat builds, however,  mysterious tremors start to unsettle Diggs and the litany of office supplies at his desk. It's another top-quality video from a group that has made a habit of just that, a simple idea perfectly executed. 

Director Carlos Lopez Estrada spoke on the video's genesis, explaining that the group's Jonathan Snipes “half jokingly said that we should put Daveed in zero gravity. I emailed them back a few days later saying, 'I know you were kidding, but what if we do?' We then embarked on a wonderful creative journey of scrappy visual effect techniques and ended up with our own janky version of zero gravity, which turned up to be a pretty cool thing, I believe.”

6. The Avalanches - "Subways"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Mrzyk & Moriceau

​One of the best musical storylines of 2016 has been The Avalanches' resurgence after a decade-plus of silence. When the music is good, everything else falls into place—including insane, psychedelic music videos like the one they put together for "Subways." 

The French illustrators Mrzyk & Moriceau brought the song to life with some Schoolhouse Rock-style animation that turns the underground into an infinite galaxy of colors, patterns, and personalities.

The kaleidoscopic freak-out makes sense, given the song's origin. The Avalanches' Robbie Chater told Rolling Stone the foundational sample is "from a 12-year-old singer called Chandra ... We came across her EP, called The Transportation EP, made in 1980 and it's this crazy No Wave post-punk random music. It must be very strange for her today to hear her 12-year-old self sampled in another dimension, exploded around in space and time, coming back out through the radio again."

5. A.CHAL - "Round Whippin'"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Max Vatblé ​

A.CHAL's "Round Whippin'" was one of the first songs to convince us that the young singer was going places. Many months later, it has a video worthy of the wavy, electric energy it exudes. Shot in striking black and white, the video flits in between live action (A.CHAL seems to be struggling with consciousness, coming in and out of what could be an illness, an overdose, or a trip) and animation.

The latter takes many forms—a car's exoskeleton and rippling waves float across the screen before they, too, pass by as the camera hurtles forward. Reality fades away and A.CHAL is lifted to parts unknown, blank space occupied only by near-infinite darkness. This is the first major video we've seen from A.CHAL, and he nailed it. 

4. Mick Jenkins ft. BADBADNOTGOOD - "Drowning"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Nathan R. Smith

Mick Jenkins has always approached his music videos as a true visual artist, but he's outdone himself this time. Mick plays the part of a slave in the video for "Drowning," one left to die underwater.  He sinks as the chorus poses a question—"When the real hold you down, you supposed to drown, right?" 

But Jenkins breaches the surface, and his subsequent struggle towards freedom is capped off with some righteous revenge. The narrative is especially chilling when paired with Jenkins' referential lyrics ("I can't breathe"), and BADBADNOTGOOD's methodical, sinister production.

3. DJ Shadow ft. Run The Jewels - "Nobody Speak"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Director: Sam Pilling

The "Nobody Speak" video is a classic piece of Run The Jewels memorabilia—Killer Mike and El-P's verses are mouthed by two opposing politicians, expertly played by Igor Tsyshkevych and Ian Bailey. The brutal DJ Shadow production escalates alongside their disagreements, and soon all hell breaks loose. 

"We wanted to make a positive, life-affirming video that captures politicians at their election-year best," DJ Shadow said. "We got this instead.”

"It's what I really wish Trump and Hillary would just do and get it over with," Killer Mike added. "And even in that fight I think Hillary would win - and that's not an endorsement."

2. Frank Ocean - "Nikes"

Frank Ocean in the "Nike" video

Director: Tyrone Lebon

​"Nikes" was our first assurance that Frank Ocean would be sharing more than that Endless live stream. It was a huge sigh of relief, proof that Frank hadn't abandoned his pop sensibilities.

The video is a peek inside the mind of a real glitter boy—Frank and his co-stars are coated in the stuff, and the artist is often surrounded by his beloved rare cars.  It's a beautiful collage of faces, home video, costume, and color. The video functions like a memory—it comes in flashes, pieces of a whole scene serving as the only real proof it happened at all. "Nikes" is equal parts fantasy, nightmare, and diary, and we've never seen anything like it. 

1.

latest_stories_pigeons-and-planes