Ever since Rick Owens used the intoxicating, slicked-back ballroom beat of “Ima Read” on the runway at Paris Fashion Week in 2012, we’ve been hooked on the formidable NYC club-rap sounds of Ojay Morgan, AKA Zebra Katz.
And now, a year after the release of his darkly minimal collaborative EP Nu Renegade with London producer Leila, Katz has offered up this beautifully weird, three-part music video to go with “Nu Renegade”, “Fucking Beast” and “What You Want”, each track and visual bleeding into each other like shots on the dancefloor. “I want it all, everything / opulent motherfucker, I own everything,” he growls over deep, rolling bass as zombiefied people in suits cling onto his every word, his arms directing them while he stands in a priest’s outfit. The second part sees Katz stand in a sweaty crowd of manically dancing bodies, his face inscrutable as the deep, bass thuds gets heavier, and the third and final part of the visual sees Katz stand alone in the darkness, his monochrome image interspersed with a dancer.
The concept of the visual was developed by Katz himself, and directed by Randy Sterling and Florian Pochlatko. “The whole shooting process was as adventurous as hell,” Pochlatko told Dazed. “On one hand it was the most difficult shooting process I ever had, with so much logistics involved, and so much going on, all run by just a small bunch of people. On the other hand, that’s where the magic happens – when you get the slight feeling of things getting out of control.”
“Once we were seriously attacked by Austrian countryside men in lederhosen, because they thought we are crazy burglars. We had to skip the whole shooting day and some crew members had to go to the hospital. The next day, one of the other crew-members freaked out because of mental health issues. So that kind of describes the energy of this whole experience. All in all, it was an extremely crazy ride, but unbelievably exciting and fun.”
