The rapper’s haunting visual streak continues with his most reflective video to date.
Vince Staples has released the Nabil-directed short film Prima Donna and for anyone who expected something lighter from the EP’s bobblehead artwork, consider it a brilliant red herring for one of his most ambitious and disturbing visuals yet.
The video begins in the midst of that comically bobbleheaded Staples surrounded by dancers before revealing itself as a video-within-a-video. From there, Staples leaves the shoot to head to his hotel while drifting further into a surreal nightmare that plays like a blend between The Shining and the classic The Twilight Zone episode ‘The Jungle’.
As he drifts past rooms containing dead stars including Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and Tupac, the video becomes a disturbing allegory for the inescapable anxiety of fame. The bleak ending is shocking, but inevitable when its doomed message is so clear from the first frame: even when the cameras stop rolling, the cameras never stop rolling.
Watch Prima Donna below.