medhane strolls in sun in the “whispers / walk with me” video

I would say “there’s something in the water there” if I could localize the current crop of artists making this particular brand of left-field, poetic, and emotive hip-hop to a specific physical place, but the spaces these artists who hail from New York, California, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas share are more often cyber than physical. Though frequent collaborators like MIKE, Pink Siifu, Slauson Malone, Maxo, and MAVI seem to have coalesced in creative hubs like Bed-Stuy and Los Angeles, their sounds are both reflective of their home environs and something beyond them. It feels more appropriate to say that there’s something in the ether. That ethereal connection extends to Brooklyn-based rapper Medhane.

The rapping half of MEDSLAUS his group with producer Slauson Malone, Medhane has ramped up his output in the latter half of the year releasing solo songs and collaborations with Queens iconoclast Deem Spencer and the aforementioned MAVI. In the artful in the Devlin Claro-Resetar-directed video for “Whispers / Walk With Me,” a contemplative Medhane recites rhymes from the parlor of a Brooklyn brownstone surrounded by African art — looking like an animated artifact himself. The second half of the video features the dramatic slow-motion cinematography of Godfred Ceasar Sedano with a tracking shot of Medhane walking down the street toward sunlight. “Seen the sun, I know the clouds come back every few days/ old niggas never hearin’ to what the youth say,” he spits almost to himself. And with consistent output like this, anyone would be remiss not to listen to when he speaks.