Detroit MC Red Pill is premiering the music video for “Instinctive Drowning,” a poignant track that explores his battle with mental illness and alcoholism, which his Mother Jody—who prematurely passed at 45 –suffered with for over 30 years.
Red Pill noted via e-mail that he put so much into writing and recording the emotional, cathartic song that he didn’t initially envision adding a video.
“I felt like no matter what we did there would be no way to match the intensity of the song through a video. I’m not an actor,”Red Pill says.
He adds that he didn’t want a video to be a “play-by-play” of the track, which frantically narrates his mother’s final moments as well as astutely analyzes his own alcohol-influenced demons.
“At first, I wanted there to be like a straight up party scene, people having fun and be totally juxtaposed against the heavy feeling of the song,” Red Pill recalls. “But we talked it out and then as usual with indie video shoots, once we started shooting we made a lot of adjustments.”
On the fly, Red Pill added scenes of him laying in a tub, which is apropos for the song’s subject on many fronts.
He says that he wants the song and video, which shows him being ignored by guests at a party as if he was invisible, to “play on this idea that depression and substance abuse isn’t always easy to point out. Cries for help aren’t always obvious.”
“Instinctive Drowning” is the title track from Red Pill’s upcoming album, which will be streaming exclusively tonight at 9 on Bandcamp.
