Nas - Rare

What this video is

Released in August 2021 as the lead single from King's Disease II, 'Rare' arrives during a critically acclaimed late-career chapter for Nas, whose collaboration with producer Hit-Boy yielded back-to-back Grammy-nominated albums. The video's chess imagery and gentleman-class aesthetic deliberately position Nas within a tradition of Black intellectual cool, distancing the visual language from contemporaneous trap…

Why it matters

Exemplifies the 2020s prestige hip-hop video canon — cinematically ambitious, narrative-driven visuals designed to complement lyrically dense, producer-auteur rap projects. The chess motif and formal costuming directly extend a visual language connecting Nas to legacy East Coast rap iconography,…

The director

Savannah Setten is an American music video director active in the early 2020s, known for her work in hip-hop visual media. Her confirmed directorial credits include Nas: Rare (2021) and Baby Keem: No Sense (2021), establishing her as a rising voice in…