Seeing Sounds: End-of-Summer Edition

Of the many things that don't get enough shine on this website, one of them has to be music videos, which you may have noticed continue to be made despite long-circulated reports of the art form's death. In the time of TikTok (or really, Twitch), what is a music video for, anyway? Who will sit down and watch it? When? I'm not sure. I have a suspicion that a lot of artists themselves aren't either. But across these nine recent releases — some of them just a short snippet, others full songs; some unembellished and straightforward, others over-the-top — you can see them trying to work it out in real-time. Check 'em out, listen to the songs, follow the links, go down some rabbit holes. Who knows, maybe by the time you come back up, another roundup of NC music videos will already be made.

Featuring: Dad Bodi & Tommyxboi, TiaCorine, Khalil Nasim, Yahliq, Reuben Vincent, Hollywood Nikki, MESSIAH!, VvG, Lxnny, sosocamo.

Dad Bodi & TommyxBoi - "4K Retainer"

A song this trunk-rattling deserved some clean visuals to go with it, and Dad Bodi, Tommyxboi and director Wyeth Collins (leroy, MAVI, Reuben, Gauxstman) delivered. There's nothing narratively or aesthetically earth-shattering happening here, the locales of parking garages and empty lots being pretty standard rap video fare. But it's the little things — the subtle camera moves, color grading and jittery transitions — that mark it clearly as a Wyeth/Play production, and a fitting compliment to Tommy and Bodi's latest salvo of tag-team, free associative yarn-spinning and knowledge-dropping. As I hear Bodi spit, "spend a lil' bit put the rest into savings/ so you got a little bit when it starts rainin'," I'm reminded that school is back in session. On "4K Retainer," at least, the tuition is free.

TiaCorine - "Fall In Love"

Coming off her latest high-profile feature verse (Chance The Rapper's "Gun In Yo Purse"), a music video with Lyrical Lemonade, and a feature on Hypebeast, Winston-Salem's TiaCorine celebrated this week as anyone would: with a loopy acid trip of a love story video, in which it seems nothing from the "Video Effects" panel was left on the cutting room floor. We're traveling through eyeballs, out of windows, spinning for no reason, even making use of a circular wipe transition. It seems almost certain that any time a question was asked during the making of this video, the answer was yes. From her personality, to her outfits, to the production styles she favors, Tia songs are usually maximalist affairs, and the playfully disorienting "Fall In Love" video is true to that form. Even the writing can't help but tug at the edges of reality from time to time. "Everybody in this bitch knows I put Winston on the map," she says — which, as long as you don't count the tobacco industry and 9th Wonder, is 100% true. There's a moment here for everybody, so I'll tell you mine: at the 27-second mark, when Tia and her man walk into the boutique with an aura so strong, even the Wallace and Gromit figurines on the shelf turn to look. Considering the rest of the video, it's one of the less absurd things that take place.

Khalil Nasim & Yahliq - "LITE BROWN"

The first full-length NC release to really grab me this year was without question THE DISAPPEARING ACT, from 24-year old Henderson native and Raleigh resident Khalil Nasim. And while its epic, 8-minute intro ("BLACK BOY CRY/ANGELS"), got my attention from the jump, it was a couple songs later on "LITE BROWN" when I fully realized the ride I was in for. Not just because of the unassuming confidence and stoic wisdom of Nasim, but also the song-stealing opening verse by Yahliq, full of inventive and alluring turns of phrase like "surviving in a cold world, but I'm unweatherized/ and my plight fetishized," and "chop my tongue/ if I tell a lie, then let it be my last." On-brand for the organic, hustler mentality that defines the 919-based Deviants collective, the video is directed by Nasim himself, with a few simple shots that mostly step aside and let the song's message shine through. You can tell how much this art means to the people making it. If that alone doesn't make you feel something, I don't know what else to say.

Reuben Vincent & 9th Wonder - "Gotta Get It"

Editor's Note: This song has since gotten an even more recent visual treatment, which you can see here.

As we venture further into the slow cancellation of the future, there's a creeping appetite for nostalgia in our art, not only on the part of audiences, but probably creators, too. But where some might allow this impulse to merely influence their output on the margins, others have chosen to quit pussyfooting around and commit to the bit all the way. Like, say, rapping over a popular 80s R&B sample, hanging out in a BMW E30, and talking on a massive brick-style mobile phone, as Reuben Vincent does in the teaser video for 9th Wonder-produced "Gotta Get It," which came out on streaming just the other day. It's more of a momentary reference than an ongoing shtick, but the routine nonetheless makes sense for a rapper whose stylistic roots are unashamedly Golden Era in nature. "They sayin' if it ain't trap, I'll never win," he raps, acknowledging his outsider status to the prevailing sound of the past 10+ years. But trends tend to come around. And when they do, Reuben will be waiting in his cherry red E30. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Hollywood Nikki - "Redbull Freestyle"

Mileage will vary depending on the particular lane(s) of hip-hop one subscribes to, but for my money, few moments will stand out at the end of the year like the Red Bull Spiral freestyle that featured Big Sean, Ab-Soul and Joey Bada$$ back in May. As much of a fool's errand it might seem to hop on the same beat after the way they (particularly Soul) laced it, any number of emcees undoubtedly found it too seductive to not at least try. One of those was Raleigh's Hollywood Nikki, who follows more than serviceably in their footsteps, with couplets like "I don't dice shake, or pump fake/free Brodie out of his cell, like it's a membrane." Swapping the pristine Red Bull studio for the harsh neon and fluorescent lights of the COLLEGE BEVERAGE 1 on Hillsborough Street, it's a faithful reproduction that's as biting and contemptuous as the original — and less dizzying, too.

MESSIAH! - "cartier regrets"

One of the best albums out of NC last year, MESSIAH!'s the villain wins was a clinic of brooding, introspective street rap. On his new single "cartier regrets," the Charlotte rapper and KILLSWITCH affiliate channels the same magnetic, emotionally charged storytelling, this time paired with a cinematic, Evil Knievel-inspired video that puts stark visual imagery to the track's themes: choices and dreams, risks and their sometimes crushing consequences.

VvG - "#30DayNotice"

When I first caught clips on Instagram of the newest video from Charlotte wordsmith Verbal Van Goh, with the rapper positioned amidst a fleet of Cybertrucks, I feared it was a fairly straightforward endorsement of Tesla — and by extension, the grifting antisemite who runs it. But upon closer inspection, the video opens with him pissing on one of them, so we're all good. Serenading saxophone from fellow Charlottean Harvey Cummings II and fiery footage of civil unrest are the other core components of this taught, freestyle-oriented release, dotted (like any VvG track) with satisfyingly clever punchlines like, "my game different/ only player that can T the ref," and "must be male cheerleaders, only way they caught a body." Would like to know where that lot is, though. No particular reason...

Lxnny - "Mint"

As we covered at length here on SE early last year, few acts in NC are more reliable sources for laid-back, nonchalant narration about the finer things in life than Charlotte-based rapper/producer Lxnny. Simple and to the point like the VvG video above it, photographer/videographer (and director of recent short film, A Flower That Won't Die) 1stKind soaks the "Mint" video in a warm glow that plays into the rapper's taste for refinement, and pairs nicely with gold watches, bubbly prosecco, and luxurious bars.

sosocamo - "pogo"

This is meant to be about sosocamo's new video for "pogo," and we'll get there, but I'm thinking first and foremost about another of his videos (dir. Northside) from two and a half years ago — his second-oldest on YouTube — in which the Apex native goes Office Space mode on pair of old tube TVs in a Durham parking lot, taking a bat to one, and throwing the other off a shipping dock. I bring this up because just a few years and a shit ton of streams later, soso is excelling at the kind of melodic rap that, for all its hypnotic enjoyability, can also carry with it an air of detached cool; of frictionless, glossy non-emotion. And yet, clearly, given his TV-smashing origins (also in that 2023 video, walking around on train tracks with an old stereo system and a cheesy smile), that's not all of who soso is. That's even more apparent from his latest video, which includes a campy, photo-realistic Microsoft Windows backdrop, a bobblehead incarnation of himself, and a slow-motion punch to the face. Whether these things are his ideas or not, his gameness for them at all reveals a degree of whimsy not shared by many of his peers, for whom manufactured persona is more important than having an actual personality.

Ryan Cocca is the founder/editor of Super Empty, a former furniture entrepreneur, and a long, long, long time ago, a music video director. He (I) can be reached at ryan@superempty.com.