Shabazz Palaces - Moon Whip Quäz ft. Darrius

What this video is

Released November 2018 as a belated visual companion to 'Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star' (Sub Pop, July 2017), 'Moon Whip Quäz' is embedded in Shabazz Palaces' expansive Quazarz sci-fi mythology — a double-album concept centered on Quazarz, a sentient alien observer dispatched to 'Amurderca' as a musical emissary confronting systemic brutality and racism. The video's slumber-party-occult aesthetic, VHS…

Why it matters

A landmark of late-2010s afrofuturist experimental hip-hop video-making, 'Moon Whip Quäz' exemplifies the Sub Pop-era Shabazz Palaces visual language: narrative surrealism, lo-fi analog nostalgia weaponized as otherworldly signifier, and domestic spaces as sites of supernatural Black feminine…

The director

TEAN is a directorial collective with a recurring creative relationship with Shabazz Palaces, having helmed multiple videos including 'Motion Sickness' (from Lese Majesty) and the conjoined 2018 visuals for 'Moon Whip Quäz' and 'Julian's Dream.' Jamieson…