Big Sean - Blessings ft. Drake, Kanye West

What this video is

Released March 3, 2015 as a lead single from Big Sean's album Dark Sky Paradise, 'Blessings' arrived at a moment of peak convergence for three of rap's dominant commercial forces: Big Sean (Detroit/GOOD Music), Drake (OVO/Toronto), and Kanye West (GOOD Music patriarch). The black-and-white visual strategy and gothic ecclesiastical set design — confessionals, stairways ascending into darkness, smoke-filled voids —…

Why it matters

A landmark mid-2010s prestige hip-hop video demonstrating the genre's shift toward cinematic minimalism: stripping rap visuals of color, location variety, and narrative in favor of stark theatrical gravitas. The chiaroscuro aesthetic reframed performance-only videos as high-art propositions,…

The director

Darren Craig is a director at The Uprising Creative, an award-winning integrated creative and production company. His music video credits include work for Big Sean, Rihanna (MTV VMA-nominated 'American Oxygen'), Miguel, CL, Tamar Braxton, Bonnie McKee, Nicky…