clipping. - True Believer

What this video is

Released April 4, 2017, this video arrived on the same day clipping.'s album Splendor & Misery was announced as a Hugo Award nominee for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) — making clipping. the first musical act nominated for a Hugo since Jefferson Starship in 1971. The video directly visualizes the album's afro-futurist concept of an enslaved individual's cosmic liberation, rendering the song's sparse…

Why it matters

A landmark artifact of mid-2010s afro-futurist experimental hip-hop, demonstrating how avant-garde rap acts on independent labels (Sub Pop/Deathbomb Arc) were engaging science fiction as a conceptual framework. The video's long-take formalism and its parent album's Hugo nomination signaled…

The director

Academy Award-nominated Mexican-American filmmaker born September 12, 1988 in Mexico City. Enrolled at Chapman University after moving to the US at age 12. Made feature debut with Blindspotting (Sundance 2018, Lionsgate). Directed Disney's Raya and the Last…