This video is not quite what I expected, although in retrospect I shouldn’t be too surprised by it. The early seeds for this hyper stylized reshaping of G-side’s visual identity were already planted. The half jocular psychedelic experimentation of ‘Aura’ video, the black-lit excursion into the inner sanctums of SMS in the ‘Back 2 Tha Future’ video, the otherworldly HSV travelogue threading in and out of the ‘I’m sorry’ video – all these can be counted as early signifiers of what we see here.

Of course the main foundation for it was laid within the underlying concepts of The Cohesive Album itself. On ‘Inner Circle’ and throughout the rest of the record SMS is posited as a quasi-mystical brotherhood/family/dynasty, forging ahead in unison toward the new and the uncharted. It would be impossible to present this idea with common rap video tropes. The visual language predominantly populated by cars, bundles of cash and big booty bitches would be simply inadequate for telling this story. And so we get a video that’s far different from the norm, not just because G-side (and by extension SMS) wanted it so but because the road they’re laying for themselves demands experimentation and all the risks that come with it.