Between them, Diplo and Waka Flocka have left an indelible mark on a generation’s approach to partying.
Diplo’s involved himself in almost every underground dance music movement of the last decade, opening up America’s ears to cumbia, reggaeton, dancehall, and most recently, the squeaky synths of dutch house and EDM trap. Mad Decent block parties have become epicenters of consumption and concentrated excess.
Flocka, meanwhile, embodies pure hedonism. “Hard In The Paint” and “Grove St. Party” diluted rap’s id into sheer party-hearty aggression; soon enough Flocka switched over into full-on EDM. The festival trap scene hasn’t been the same since.
Now they’ve teamed up for a new video, co-produced by LNY TNZ and Yellow Claw. With these names you’d expect nothing less than full-fledged molly-snorting, champagne snorting trap-stravagazna, right?
Wrong. Well, kind of.
Related: 2 Dead, 20 Hospitalized After Diplo’s Mad Decent Block Party
The video for “Techno” does involve drugs. Ecstasy, specifically. This isn’t the kind of slow-motion, neon-saturated abstraction we’ve come to expect from EDM videos,though. Rather, it’s an arresting narrative shot in muted tones, with distinctly non-model actors.
It tell the story of a working class father who, in an obvious homage to “Breaking Bad” and Walter White, starts selling ecstasy pills in order to give his daughter a better life and a college education.
He bankrolls a few young, edgy types, who concoct pills in a warehouse laboratory. The drugs make their way into a rave, which his daughter happens to attend. Tragedy strikes.
Though it sensationalizes the issue to a degree some might find emotionally manipulative, the video does, at the end of the day, present a remarkable anti-drug message from two of the biggest names in dance music. In a year when people have died from overdoses at raves around the world, that can only be a good thing.
Watch it below:
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