On Friday, the young jazz great Kamasi Washington will release his massive, sweeping double album Heaven And Earth. It is tremendous, and you should absolutely hear it as soon as you get a chance. And today, Washington has shared his new video for "Street Fighter Mas," the warm and expansive instrumental that he shared a couple of weeks ago.
The "Street Fighter Mas" video comes from the great music-video auteur AG Rojas. In the clip, we see Washington -- who, with his robe and beads and spiky rings and cane, looks like an absolute badass -- wandering into a mysterious office building. There, he encounters some strange sights and challenges a master.
The videos starts out looking like what might happen if David Lynch directed a samurai movie. Eventually, it turns into what could be called a sports movie, as well as a tribute to a classic early-'90s arcade game. (Of course Washington would pick Blanka.)
Of the video, Rojas says:
I love inhabiting Kamasi's world, and “Street Fighter Mas” was an opportunity to take a left turn and explore the surreal qualities of that world. When Kamasi told me the background of the song, how Street Fighter was a safe space for him—it took me back to the supermarket down the street from my childhood home where my brother and I would try and get in as many games before our mother was finished shopping. It was a true labor of love for everyone involved, coming from a desire to interpret the cinematic qualities of the track into something equally unpredictable, familiar, absurd and ultimately triumphant.
Here's the video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=TguiOHZ-MV8&=&feature=em-uploademail
Heaven And Earth is out 6/22 on Young Turks.
