GONJASUFI is a yoga teacher by day and a genre-bending vocalist by night. Sometime in between, he’s managed to star in a music video for ‘The Blame’, a song from his new MU.ZZ.LE mini-album.
GONJASUFI has a more organic, earthy sound than his blooping and bleeping label mates on Warp. He’s often called electronic hip-hop, and there’s certainly an element of slang, rhythm and ‘telling it like it is’ in his music. But ‘The Blame’ draws just as much from the stark honesty of Delta blues and the spoken word poetry of artists like the late Gil Scott-Heron. It’s an end of the world track, GONJASUFI moaning “Children fuckin’ blow up malls/Grown men, we fuckin’ blow-up dolls” like a soothsayer of doom and decadence, sirens wailing around him.
The post-apocalyptic blues of the track are matched with a post-apocalyptic LA in the video. GONJASUFI shuffles around the empty city, which is being swallowed by the desert following some unspecified disaster. Shopping trolleys and traffic lights burn into the clear blue sky. Something awful has happened, and we can tell from his weathered face and stoic eyes that GONJASUFI saw it coming.
Words by Matt Nielson.
