Music Video of the Week is a brand new weekly highlight from EBONY devoted to the visible experiences that form the best way we devour music as we speak. In an period the place the artwork of music video-making typically seems like a dying medium, this weekly highlight celebrates the administrators, performers and visionaries respiration life right into a format that also carries immense cultural and emotional weight—whether or not the movies are setting social media ablaze or flying slightly below the radar.
This week’s choose is each—after which some.
FKA twigs’ “Childlike Issues,” that includes North West, is a dreamlike visible assertion that folds actuality, fantasy and trade frustration into an eight-minute movie that lingers lengthy after the ultimate body. The observe serves as the most recent single from twigs’ new album, Eusexua, and although the venture explores intimacy and eroticism within the grownup sense, “Childlike Issues” serves as its wide-eyed counterpoint—anchored in purity, religion and the unfiltered urgency of artistic imaginative and prescient. The visible was directed by Jordan Hemingway.
North West, daughter of Kim Kardashian and Ye, delivers a verse sung totally in Japanese, referencing her love for Jesus and reinforcing a sort of religious innocence that feels disarmingly honest. The mere presence of an 11-year-old on a tune from an album titled Eusexua is sure to lift eyebrows. And but, on this occasion, North’s contribution seems like an intentional juxtaposition, not a misstep—one which speaks to the dualities artists typically discover.
The video opens with twigs pitching the idea of “Childlike Issues” to a music government and director, each of whom are reluctant to fund her imaginative and prescient. Why? The tune hasn’t gone viral—but. What follows is a fragile cat-and-mouse recreation between artistic ambition and industrial gatekeeping. We watch as twigs oscillates between the sterile, dismissive boardroom and the luxurious, fantastical world she goals of constructing. In some ways, it’s a meta-commentary on the state of music movies themselves: Why put money into artwork that doesn’t have already got a hashtag marketing campaign hooked up?
That is hardly new territory for FKA twigs. A fiercely unbiased artist since her debut, she has lengthy championed self-funding and inventive autonomy, typically eschewing conventional trade pathways as a way to protect the integrity of her work. However right here, her battle is extra explicitly laid naked—and arguably extra resonant than ever.
North’s look, nonetheless, is the place the dialog turns murky. Earlier this 12 months, public concern erupted when Ye teased a observe that includes North alongside Diddy and King Combs—this, amid mounting sexual assault allegations in opposition to Diddy, who now faces authorized proceedings. In that context, “Childlike Issues” seems like a pendulum swing: a gentle, virtually sacred reminder of childhood purity that stands in stark distinction to the controversies swirling across the trade’s darker corners.
So, is it applicable? That will depend on the place you stand. What’s clear is that the video doesn’t simply current North as a star youngster dropped into the combo for clicks—it frames her as half of a bigger creative assertion about innocence, perception and what it means to be heard.
In the long run, “Childlike Issues” is a masterclass in layered storytelling—an unflinching have a look at the music trade’s obsession with virality, a quiet ode to artistic freedom, and a thought-provoking dialog starter concerning the boundaries between artwork and accountability. So far as first entries go, this one units the bar sky-high.