Thus far Busdriver has set expectations high for his Thumbs mixtape out this Friday. The first single “Worlds To Run” featuring milo and Anderson Paak was an emotive performance in which each artist meditates on how to conjure the strength in expression through strife, while follow up “Ministry of the Torture Couch” with Hemlock Ernst offered vitriol for the police state. For the third single “MUCH” Busdriver eases into a headspace that offers levity, particularly in the video above.
Directed by WC Tank, “MUCH” is a single-shot video that follows Busdriver through a labyrinthian household where there’s cash to be collected from secret storage. All the while, Driver is letting us know he and his cohorts are doing too much, which has a multitude of interpretations that are easy to miss by accepting the narrative of the video as gospel. The production by The Jefferson Park Boys (Mr. Carmack x Kenny Segal x Mike Parvizi)keeps it bouncy with LA airs, but lines like “they’ve criminalize my negritude” followed by a shrug of “but I’m just doing too much” zero in on the source of Driver’s dispatch. “MUCH” might initially feel like Busdriver acknowledging his eccentricity, but encoded in each verse is a message that goes out to all young black men who have been met with obstacles for the simple interest of their favorite thing.
Busdriver’s Thumbs mixtape is out November 6 via Temporary Whatever/Alpha Pup. He also announced today that he will be putting out a poetry book entitled Hat: The Movie and new music endeavor called Still Friends via Meredith Graves’ Honor Press imprint in 2016.
