Flying Lotus and Denzel Curry bring back the boom-bap in the latest video from FlyLo’s 2019 album Flamagra, “Black Ballons Reprise.” One of the standout tracks from the 27-song album, the song finds Lotus utilizing some ’90s-esque breakbeats to buttress Curry’s fiery diatribes against systemic inequality.
In the video, directed by Jack Begert, the duo extends the throwback sensibility to the imagery, shooting in stark black-and-white, with simple compositions consisting of closeups of Curry performing in deserted locations, including an empty garage filled with — you guessed it — black balloons. Curry also “becomes” a massive black balloon himself, mirroring the eerie lyrics of the song’s hook: “The black balloon floats / The black balloon flies / The black balloon pops / The black balloon dies / I must be the black balloon then.”
During the run-up to Flamagra‘s release, Flying Lotus put out singles with features including Anderson .Paak, Solange, and Little Dragon, while more recently, he performed as Captain Murphy at Adult Swim Festival, where he trolled the audience by disguising Hannibal Buress as MF Doom. Meanwhile, Denzel Curry featured on Uproxx’s Best Albums Of 2019 list with his back-to-basics album, Zuu, and tore up his Spotify Sessions performance with a hardcore punk set including a cover of “I Against I” by Bad Brains.
Flamagra is out now via Warp Records. Get it here.