Azealia Banks’ “Yung Rapunxel” Video: Watch The Dark, Surreal Clip

Brilliant-but-problematic rapstress Azealia Banks has just released the video for her brilliant-but-problematic single “Yung Rapunxel” — any guesses on how it is? (Spoiler: It’s brilliant but problematic.)

Featuring a lot of portentous Illuminati imagery, the same thoroughly unsettling eyes-as-teeth motif that was featured on the track’s single artwork and a truckload of owls (do owls come in a truck?), the Jam Sutton-directed clip has a loose narrative involving a brutal police regime hunting Banks down through some kind of apocalyptic cityscape, but mostly it’s about Banks vibing and raging. The good news is that she does both quite well, and just as a watchable thing, “Yung Rapunxel” is as arresting as any video this year, a monstrous wormhole of weird shit. 

The ultimate effect, though, is a purely aesthetic one, more than the video actually imparts any meaning: If there’s something she’s trying to say, rather than just an advertisement of her own darkness, it doesn’t come through. Maybe it doesn’t have to, or maybe that’s the point. If she’s trolling us, she’s not doing a bad job.

Watch up top.

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