Man, are we glad to get some news from Alec Lomami. We gave the Mélancolie Joyeuse EP a rave review earlier this year, but aside from a few interviews and a travel guide to Kinshasa, there’s been little out of the young talent for a spell. Then the video for “CLV” dropped a few days ago, and even though the track itself has been around for a while, the video is so good it feels like a new toy.
All the little kids in this video were kind of reminiscent of another video we fell for recently, but who cares? Little kids dancing it out on DDR machines, real life pong played above a downtown cityscape, and cutting between real-world and virtual reality car races is boss. Overall, it’s a great and appropriate aesthetic choice for this track, because when we first gave the E.P. a spin, the little taste of nostalgia present in the pancake breakfast that is Lomami’s game really stuck out.
DummyMag.com premiered the video, and they supplied a short interview with Lomami along with it. In it, Lomami said, “I'm just a[n] everyday human being who tries to make heartfelt pop songs”, which offers valuable insight into his approach as a creator. On just about every level, there's no arguing that the music he makes is heavily influence by hip hop. But hip hop has been one of the dominant forms of pop music in the US and much of the rest of the world for the best part of the last 15 years, and in that time, it's managed to work it's way into any number of localized shapes- Lomami's electro-pop rap is only one of the interesting varietals that have sprouted from all directions.
But what pushes Lomami's work past the threshold of pure hip hop into the realm of pop? He raps on his tracks. His beats are electronically produced or sample based. He's obviously got swag. But he's playful and thoughtful. His image is slick and hyper-fashionable, in both clothing and artwork. Best yet, he creates sugar-sweet hooks that pull at the listener with sentimentally. A finger cannot easily be put upon every aspect of his appeal (nor does it need to be), but whatever the specific recipe is, this video embodies it perfectly. So hats off to Lomami and his director, Tlhonepho Thobejane, and here’s hoping to many more.
