Uncommon Nasa has been a fixture in NYC hip-hop for years, a presence circulating through a surprising amount of some beloved releases, and highly linked to El-P’s seminal Definitive Jux label. His label Uncommon Records has been active since the early 2000s, drawing a creative route through left-of-center emcees like Short Fuze, Gajah, and Last Sons.
This year saw the release of Uncommon Nasa’s newest full-length, the ponderous, ruminative, introspective Written At Night. “Written At Night as an album is themed around the overnight hours where creativity is often most free to roam out of you. The album is paced by the time of Midnight to 4am. ‘Gingerbread Hag’ takes place during the 3am portion of the record, the nightmare sequence.”
This song is of special note today, as we at Black Girl Nerds are excited and honored to debut the accompanying “Gingerbread Hag” video today. At its center are two young people, navigating a strange forest. In his own words:
“The song is meant to be the inverse Hansel and Gretel story. It’s written through the eyes of the old woman instead of the kids. It’s a metaphor for the incursion that children and having children can have on our lives as functioning adults. Sometimes life isn’t always about kids, I suppose is the point. Maybe we had Hansel and Gretel all wrong? Maybe the woman was defending herself?”
The video was directed by Mike Petrow, a filmmaker whose portfolio includes music videos for related underground hip-hop coal miners like Billy Woods, Elucid, and producer Willie Green of Brooklyn’s Backwoodz Studioz. Shot in Portland, ME, it features guest verses by Brzowski and electric guitars by C-Money Burns, members of “power sleaze” Portland band Vinyl Cape, a kind of melange of doom metal, hip-hop, noise, post-metal, and ambient genres.
“The young people in it are twin sibling actors that replied to our Craigslist ad. Their mom drove them up from New Hampshire, they are acting to save for their college fund. Super smart kids, way smarter then we are.”
Without further ado, take a look at the “Gingerbread Hag” video, and don’t forget to check out the full record Written At Night by Uncommon Nasa.
