Multicultural New York rap crew World’s Fair are releasing their debut album New Lows via Fool’s Gold this spring, and to celebrate, they’ve dropped the hallucinogenic music video for lead single, “Elvis’ Flowers (On My Grave).” The weird, hazy visuals and tromping, defiant rhymes pay homage to the closed New York City club, Elvis Guesthouse.
The video, directed by the group’s own Nasty Nigel, is a lo-fi, camcorder-shot affair, replete with trippy camera effects and distorted imagery that calls to mind a night out in the big city inebriated on a cocktail of whatever’s handy. The beat skitters and skips from doomsday drum-and-bass to straightforward NY boom-bap and back again, with an eerie, hypnotic siren anchoring the chaotic drums.
As Nigel explains both the visual and song, “The deeper DJ Thoth and I got into DJing at Elvis Guesthouse, the more we experimented with BPMs and tempos finding a middle ground to please both ourselves and the crowd. Lansky Jones, NOLIFE and myself flew over to Detroit to link up with Black Noi$e and work on this album. Naturally “Elvis’ Flowers” came from blending jungle and rap the same way we were experimenting behind the decks. The music video documents that year running around New York City and the watering hole that was Elvis Guesthouse.”
Watch the video above and look for New Lows out this spring.
