Calvin Valentine’s Psychedelic Visual for "Your Drugs"

It’s an underused tactic in hip-hop when an artist utilizes the visual that accompanies a song to further the message they’re attempting to convey in a track. Many sociopolitical pieces use visuals to depict police brutality and marches, many psych-electronic pieces, like those of Flying Lotus, use the visual to match the sonics and surpass it in avant-garde distortion. The same goes for Calvin Valentine‘s visual for “Your Drugs” – an appropriately named title considering the subject matter and the music video which came with the song.

The video is essentially an acid trip. Throughout the video, we see Calvin running away from giant roaches, eyes being replaced by mouths, tie dye imagery reminiscent of the 60s, tall snowy mountains, what appears to be a dinosaurs leg, and much more. The video is suiting considering the lyrics of the song, which detail Calvin’s day with a girl he’s romantically involved with, while engaging in drug related activity with her.

“Your Drugs” is a single off of Eugene, Valentine’s upcoming project, and is an amalgamation of emotions extending from the extremely raunchy to sentimental, and documents the spectrum of his feelings he’s experienced thus far. As a result, the project will feature a wide array of different sounds, all with the purpose of creating nonidentical backgrounds which imitate actual emotions.

“I don’t want to be boxed into any one category. I know that’s what everyone needs to do to feel comfortable, but I can make reggae music, indie rock, whatever…Eugene is a document of what I was feeling at the time.”

Eugene is expected to drop October 28th and is available for pre-order. You can keep up with Calvin on Twitter, Instagram, and SoundCloud.