Video of the Week: Busdriver “Ego Death (Ft. Aesop Rock and Danny Brown)”

I once got in all kinds of shit for giving a Busdriver album a perfect score (it was Jhelli Beam, I still stand by that score, editors be damned). I’ve been a sucker for Busdriver’s manic flow and convoluted wordplay for ages, and I get that he’s not an emcee for everyone, but if he’s not an emcee for you, maybe we shouldn’t be friends. Still, the glimpses Busdriver has given from his upcoming album Perfect Hair show that he’s  newly revitalized by the emergence of likeminded emcees such as Danny Brown, who pops up alongside fellow nasal OG Aesop Rock to back Busdriver up on “Ego Death.” Jeremiah Jae’s beat leans a little more straightforwardly hip-hop than Busdriver’s recent electronic excursions, but the clear message here with the presence of Danny Brown is that there’s been a market for this style all along, it just took people a bit to catch up.

As if to rub that in all the more, the video for “Ego Death” is a riff on Wall-e, filtered through some retro-futurist Max Headroom graphics and a shitload of Illuminati-winking imagery. Also people with tvs for heads, which I am always cool with. The clip has faux-Wall-e (or maybe it’s Johnny Five?) shuffling down a toxic urban landscape, taunted by Busdriver, Danny Brown and Aesop Rock as floating cyber heads. Danny Brown gets the coolest look, decked out as a purple, gap toothed skull with some hip future visor. There’s a whole lot of menace to Jae’s beat and though it’s not anywhere near as electronic oriented as the imagery, it’s easy to think of it as a sonic preview of the urban apocalypse to come. If I was still stuck on the ratings grind, it’d probably be extra incentive to drop another perfect score on Busdriver and say fuck you to cowardly editors. Except I don’t have an editor anymore either. There goes my conflict fantasy.

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Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Loser City as well as Ovrld, where he contributes music reviews and writes a column on undiscovered Austin bands.  You can also flip through his archives at  Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with friends on twitter: @Nick_Hanover