Hear me out: I think this is going to become a classic. Nine minutes of dead serious Afrofuturism animation accompanying another fever dream from the Akashic Records of Killah Priest. His role in the Wu has always seemed to be resident shaman, similar to how Ab-Soul is secretly the most important member of the TDE cinematic universe. Some things just cannot be explained until they are understood.
Wide open vessels with zero fear will take you to some strange places, and “NASA Case” is surely one of them. Priest is out there, but he’s more Wesley Willis than ODB, and that’s a fond compliment. As surreally ornate as the details get here, his restless intelligence and authentic wonder keep it grounded.
The beat doesn’t get boring, even at an absurdly long stretch, so props to Purpose on another custom tailored banger. (It’s also dope to see Tragic Allies continue to get love from the Wu.) This is a load-bearing composition, because the video is some primitive Americana indeed, at least in terms of lip-syncing. Keep watching, though, and you may find the sheer visual inventiveness grows on you. This is a darkly Hanna-Barbera vision of panspermia, like some well-intentioned public television station slid Sun Ra several thousand dollars to produce a pilot for a kids show.
Or maybe Malachi York? This is fertile gumbo with a lot of currents running through it. It is also some extremely Fortean shit, an encounter narrative with all the uncanny yet familiar elements of High Strangeness at every turn. Killah Priest has said himself that he’s been savvy to the other side since he was a boy, so this should come as no surprise. That same strangeness lends this a mythic quality, and sweet old dead Joseph Campbell would have a lot to say about this whole affair.
Or maybe Carl Jung? This is the same rapper who dropped the critically acclaimed Forest of the Happy Ever After a few years back, delivering an entire album narrated from the perspective of different creatures in the woods. If you think that sounds ridiculous you have no idea how insane the actual tracks are, and I urge you to give it a spin. Think of it as an endurance contest about how much you really want to “push the limits” of this here genre. Let’s see what you really think about “innovative lyricism,” son. Most of you mouthbreathers will happily buy anything with gun sounds and an obi strip.
Compared to his compatriots, it is striking how pure Killah Priest’s love of the artform is. That may read like I’m insane, but I mean “pure” as in innocent, something he shares with RZA, who would famously find random rappers walking around NYC and then make some songs with them the same night. Both of them have lent their co-sign to a lot of questionable nobodies over the years! This is not some deficiency of character, either, this is high virtue. They walk the walk; that slogan about hip hop as a way of life means something real to them.
Killah Priest is the poet laureate of the strange new religions to come. This particular video is pure, you feel me? This is destined to become one of those immortal online artifacts that get used as a cultural shibboleth at parties, one of those youtube experiences you only saw because you were forced to watch by your friends. “You haven’t seen this?” This is hyperstition, classical retrocausality at work. We may not live to see it, my friends, but every word of this prophecy will come to pass from here. Five Dickies.
