Jhené Aiko has dropped her futuristic, Rae Sremmurd-featuring video for the remix of “Sativa,” the latest visual off the R&B singer’s 2017 album Trip.
The singer-songwriter explains how drugs, travel and a surreal family reunion helped her cope with her brother’s death – and shaped her new LP
“Sativa” opens with Aiko seemingly created in a lab by the Mississippi rap duo before she’s unleashed into the world. Dance parties, steam rooms and card games follow before the video ends with Aiko outlining the sci-fi ideas for the “Sativa” video in a notebook.
“Sativa” initially appeared on Trip with just Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee appearing on the track; the remix adds Rae Srummerd’s Slim Jxmmi to the cut.
Trip listed among Rolling Stone’s 20 Best R&B Albums of 2017. The expansive 22-track album, inspired by the death of Aiko’s brother in 2012, charts the singer’s fictionalized journey fueled, as the album title suggests, by psychedelic drugs.
“In the beginning, I take LSD and find myself in Jukai, which is a forest in Japan where people go to kill themselves,” Aiko told Rolling Stone in 2017.
“I went to Big Sur by myself, and it was probably at the height of a mental breakdown. I had just driven six hours by myself, and went on a hike while on mushrooms,” she recalls. “I was feeling very emotional and looked up and saw the sun. I was thinking of Jukai while I was there, thinking, ‘Wow, this is such a beautiful place and sometimes people decide to take their lives in beautiful places’ – maybe not for the scary reason people think but maybe because they feel at peace.”
(via RollingStone)
