The 7 Best Music Videos of June 2020

Each month, we’re running down memorable clips and celebrating artists who are breaking new ground with their visuals or choreography. In June’s edition, Ashnikko and Grimes create a 3D cyberpunk anime, Amber Mark throws a beatific rooftop dance party, Duval Timothy makes a powerful stop-motion statement on Black creative ownership, and more. Check out the best of the best below.

7. Chloe x Halle: “Forgive Me”

Director: C Prinz

For their slinky R&B single “Forgive Me,” Chloe x Halle offer up stylish futuristic imagery, green laser lights, and a squad of harnessed male dancers. The narrative is tantalizingly vague, with the sisters seemingly burying an unlucky ex, and the focus is all on the choreo. Chloe x Halle are known for their elastic dancing—their video for “Do It” inspired a TikTok challenge last month—and here, they deliver with effortless hip-shaking. Their deep confidence is delightful to watch.

6. Preservation: “Rose Royce” [ft. Quelle Chris]

Animation: Quelle Chris

On Preservation’s new album, Eastern Medicine, Western Illness, the New York DJ and producer mixes samples from vinyl he found in Hong Kong record shops with guest verses from a variety of rappers. He approaches the obscure Chinese, French, and English vocal samples with care, flipping them into intriguing textures and vibrant cross-cultural moments. He sparks particularly good results on the woozy, guitar-tinged “Rose Royce,” featuring Detroit rapper Quelle Chris, who directed and designed the animated video. Squiggly illustrations of Chris are inserted into laidback smoke sessions, Street Fighter character select screens, and more. (Some of the album’s other contributors make cameos in these sequences, too.) The fast pace and unpolished drawings nicely complement Quelle Chris’ tumbling, freewheeling rhymes; both the video and his flow fire on all cylinders.

5. Ashnikko: “Cry” [ft. Grimes]

Director: Mike Anderson

In the few EPs she’s released, the rapper Ashnikko has established a few constants: hyperactive scream-singing, brash beats, and hairpin turns through genres. For the 3D-animated video to “Cry,” a dark rap-rock song featuring Grimes, Ashnikko goes full cybergoth by casting herself as a three-headed, pigtailed fighter and Grimes as her fairy accomplice. Equal parts frantic action thriller and intergalactic anime, “Cry” dazzles even as it turns grisly: Ashnikko’s menacing avatar eventually tears a person in half in a fit of rage. The elaborate digital animations capture the thudding song’s angst, crystallized in Ashnikko’s ear-splitting chorus: “Bitch, are you tryna make me cry?”

4. Amber Mark: “My People (Eddie Kendricks cover)”

Director: Amber Mark

Amber Mark has been extremely productive in quarantine. Citing a “fuck-it mentality,” the New York singer has been paying tribute to favorite songs in her “Covered-19” series; in March, her spin on “Heart-Shaped Box” set Nirvana’s emotional yearning against a snappy R&B beat. For her latest, a slow-burning update on Eddie Kendricks’ 1972 activist single “My People…Hold On,” Mark incorporates gentle conga drums and multitracked backing vocals. In the self-directed video, Mark and a troupe of dancers in flowing white dresses dance harmoniously on a New York rooftop. Drenched in sunlight and surrounded by trees, they offer a nourishing vision of beauty that feels especially potent in this time of unrest.

3. Megan Thee Stallion: “Girls in the Hood”/“Savage” (BET Awards)

This past weekend’s BET Awards were forced to get creative and piece together a broadcast during both a political uprising and a pandemic. Creating an entirely virtual show meant artists had to record their performances with their own teams, allowing for production values that would have been much more difficult to stage live, like Chloe x Halle having a dance-off with duplicates of themselves and Alicia Keys playing piano on a barren L.A. street. No one gave a better performance than Megan Thee Stallion, who turned two tracks—new single “Girls in the Hood” and Suga standout “Savage”—into a visual reminiscent of Tupac’s iconic post-apocalyptic clip for “California Love.” Mounted on a dirt bike and bedecked with feathers, exuding power and glamour, the Houston rapper looks like the long-lost daughter of Tina Turner’s brutal ruler in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. While maintaining her breathless flow, Megan leads a troupe of dancers in twerking and kicking that, once again, proves her knees are made of steel, all in front of a huge sign sporting the Black power fist. In under five minutes, she sets the bar for any virtual awards show performances that dare follow.

2. Kelly Lee Owens: “On”

Director: Kasper Häggström

A man and his adorable golden retriever go on a seemingly mundane road trip in the video for “On,” from electronic artist Kelly Lee Owens’ forthcoming second LP Inner Song. Filmed with the gloss of a car commercial, the clip follows them on a long drive through the countryside, watching from the backseat as they stop to play catch and run along the beach. The sentimental journey raises questions about where they’re headed and why, with those answers ultimately revealed in a sequence at a ferry landing that’s both crushing and oddly hopeful. Its simple visual concept is delivered with a clear, compassionate touch.

1. Duval Timothy: “Slave” [ft. Twin Shadow]

Director: Duval Timothy

Duval Timothy’s music is filled with field recordings, electronics, and solo piano, each of them weaving together to create self-reflective, abstract music. “Slave”—the lead single from the London- and Sierra Leone-based artist’s forthcoming third album, Help—is a haunting, piano-driven track that confronts enduring echos of slavery within the music industry. The song uses a looped sample of the word “slave,” spoken by the artist Ibiye Camp, and a clip of Pharrell on The Breakfast Club discussing the nefarious way record companies pressure artists to give up the rights to their master recordings. The track’s claymation video, made by Timothy and artist Max Valizadeh, takes the idea a step further, depicting a sentient audio file born out of creativity that is quickly captured and multiplied by a greedy label. The simple animation makes the song’s message of Black ownership its focal point, and becomes even more trenchant once Timothy pays homage to Prince and Nipsey Hussle, artists who maneuvered control of their masters before their deaths. Here, he advocates powerfully for creative reclamation in a mission partly driven by a personal victory: Timothy bought back the masters to all of his music just last year.

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork