Big Sean - Light ft. Jeremih

What this video is

Released May 5, 2017, during a particularly charged period of national debate around police brutality, racial profiling, and hate crimes in the United States. The video directly visualizes multiple categories of racialized and Islamophobic violence that were prominent in news cycles throughout 2016–2017. As a non-single album cut from I Decided (Def Jam, February 2017), its video release was an explicitly activist…

Why it matters

Represents a peak moment of the socially conscious hip-hop music video as activist artifact — a tradition running from Public Enemy's late-80s work through Kendrick Lamar's 'Alright' (2015). 'Light' is notable for combining mainstream R&B vocal features (Jeremih) with documentary-realist visual…

The director

Lawrence Lamont is a director, screenwriter, and producer raised in Detroit, Michigan. He began directing music videos and short films in 2008–2009, building an extensive collaboration with Big Sean across projects from 2014 to 2020. He was nominated for an…