The last we heard from Hamilton based artist Emay was with his search for purpose on Israfil ‘Angels Trumpet’. Last week, he shared a new single and complimenting video for Bakkah: The History of Humankind.
Featuring a krumping dancer in riot gear, Emay and the dancer linger around an abandoned gas station in a deserted plot of land along a highway. Glitched out effects flicker throughout with the quick stuttered dancing juxtaposed against the pitched down vocals, next to Emay’s rhymes of ideological development and the conflict of ideas taking over and building off one another.
In an email, Emay explained Bakkah: The History of Humankind:
This new song “Bakkah”, was initially just a poem about humanity as a whole. When it began to rhyme I basically just ran with it. It was also a great opportunity for me to experiment with my writing as I was always self-conscious about using a more poetic/metaphorical style of writing so with this track I allowed myself to get completely lost in that form. For the video, me and the director, Aaron Hall, bounced a lot of ideas off of each other and eventually Aaron thought of using riot gear for the video. To me the video is a battle displaying my ideological development and the conflict of ideas taking over and building off of one another. Much love to Aaron Hall and Dujean Williams for creating that with me.
Three years in the making, Emay’s completely self-produced album, Ilah, is due out soon.