August Alsina - Lonely

What this video is

Released in early 2017, 'Lonely' arrives during August Alsina's most prolific singles run, a pre-album promotional campaign for his Def Jam third album that also included 'Drugs' and 'Wait.' The song samples and reimagines Bobby Womack's 1982 classic 'If You Think You're Lonely Now,' anchoring a contemporary trap-soul production in deep soul tradition — a technique emblematic of 2010s R&B's nostalgia-mining ethos.…

Why it matters

Represents the mid-2010s Southern R&B tradition's intersection with trap production aesthetics and classic soul sampling, signaling the commercial viability of emotional vulnerability in Black male R&B performance. The Womack interpolation bridges a 35-year gap in Black popular music tradition,…

The director

Amber Gray is a director and photographer based in New York City, originally from Northern California. Her IMDb credits include music videos for August Alsina ('Lonely', 'Drugs', both 2017) and K. Michelle ('I Just Wanna', 2013), as well as short films…