Teddybears - Cobrastyle (feat. Mad Cobra)

What this video is

Released as a single on 6 June 2006, 'Cobrastyle' was the centrepiece of Teddybears' US breakthrough via Big Beat/Atlantic on the album Soft Machine. The track fuses mid-2000s Swedish electro-punk with Jamaican dancehall, built atop Mad Cobra's vocal style from his 2001 track 'Press Trigger'. The video's mockumentary format satirised classic rock excess mythology at a moment when the genre parody film (Spinal Tap's…

Why it matters

A landmark document of mid-2000s European electro-punk meeting Jamaican dancehall within an American indie-rock distribution context. The video's mockumentary form and bear-mask iconography exemplify a broader 2005–2008 trend of anonymous or costumed acts (Daft Punk, Gorillaz, Deadmau5) leveraging…

The director

Ace Norton is an Asian American filmmaker born and raised in Venice, California. A third-generation filmmaker, he attended the USC School of Cinema and co-founded Commondeer Films, producing over 40 music videos. In 2007 he signed to Partizan. He has…