On November 28th 2023, creative communications company PgLang released an announcement - visuals for Baby Keem’s 2021 album The Melodic Blue would be put out to the public via Amazon Prime Video the following week, on December 5th. The week-long wait was worth the result in many ways. Written by PgLang and directed by young Savannah Setten, this film throws the audience into nothing short of an arthouse experience. Its stunning visuals mixed with animation aim to portray themes of internal struggle, loss, lust and addiction. And as if it couldn’t get any better, fans were also happy to discover new unreleased tracks as Easter eggs throughout the movie.
While releasing a movie to an album put out two years ago may seem like a questionable choice, the album in question was not an average forgettable release. Debuting no. 5 on the Billboard 200, receiving 7 RIAA Gold and Platinum awards and a Grammy for the song ‘Family Ties’, Baby Keem’s The Melodic Blue is undoubtedly one of the most talked about debut albums the past decade has seen, earning Keem some emancipation from his previous image of “Kendrick’s cousin”. What distinguishes it from Keem’s earlier work, is the album’s increased versatility and its experimentation with new sound. In an interview with Ebro Darden, the talented young producer expressed that with The Melodic Blue he attempted to “push [himself] to the limits [he] didn’t even know [he] could go”. Indeed we hear that experimental nature of the album throughout: new melodies, production based on heavy, booming bass, washed out synths, Keem’s tryout of a new flow alongside the very apparent influence of RnB (seen, for instance, through sampling of Fugees on ‘Highway 95’) contrasting with the artist’s clear trap music influence.
In some places, on a thematic level, the album may even be seen as introspective. While, admittedly, the album as a whole does not center itself around Keem’s past, certain songs seem confessional. ‘issues’ (which Keem refers to as “one of [his] most personal records, in terms of what [he] went through as a child”) and especially ‘scapegoats’ are worth mentioning here. The latter starts off by setting the scene for introspection through sampling of serpentwithfeet’s ‘redemption’ as Keem goes on to reflect on the trauma and mourning he may still feel despite his newly acquired fame. Despite this, it is impossible to say that such themes follow the album throughout.
Meanwhile, with visuals released for the album, we begin to notice Keem’s desire to bring such themes forward. For instance, the album teaser-trailer released on September 6th 2021 shows Keem standing on a dock shared between two women - his girlfriend and his mother. The latter's addiction seems to have had an influence so profound on the rapper that he visibly cannot distance himself from it to this day, allowing it to affect his relationships along the way. ‘scapegoats’ (which seems to have become the album’s soundtrack), as it plays in the background, seems to be an emphasis on the weight of Keem’s past on his present.
Looking today at the new visuals, we notice that they make great use of the track as well. The title sequence is symbolically accompanied by the ‘scapegoats’ sample: serpentwithfeet’s heavenly, enigmatic track ‘redemption’. It’s not an accident that ‘scapegoats’ is used here as a soundtrack again - the movie will end up being the most emotional of all elements to The Melodic Blue. It portrays Keem as a character battling his own urges and temptation - an addiction to a surreal underwater place referred to as “the melodic blue”, filled with beautiful, otherworldly women. There, visitors are tricked into believing that their lust is in fact love, and if they don’t escape on time (which was the case for East, a character constantly mentioned throughout the film), they lose their lives to that addiction. Keem’s worried-yet-demanding girlfriend Jade (portrayed by Amandla Stenberg) does her best to drag him out of his addiction, but Keem’s attachment issues, to which he confesses, make it so that it only increases his desire to escape and resort to more superficial forms of “love”. It is a movie about a shared struggle.
Addiction is not chosen as the main theme flippantly. It’s a phenomenon that heavily affected Keem’s life. As he often mentions in his music, his mother was struggling with substance and alcohol abuse as he was growing up. He therefore seeks to portray addiction to be exceptionally destructive in the movie. It becomes the reason for Keem’s struggles. It was the reason for his friend’s death. It is the reason that his relationship is falling apart. It eventually ends up ruining Jade’s life as well – in the closing scene she puts both her hands up and they are shown to be wrinkly. While, admittedly, it comes after the scene where she rescues Keem from the paws of the Melodic Blue’s most dangerous creature, Alexa, while pretending to be one of them herself, we can assume that that one visit hooked her onto that place, providing an escape from her cold, unaffectionate boyfriend. It is a chain reaction, in which addiction ends up affecting not only the addict but those around him as well.
The movie therefore feels more intimate than the album. If in the latter we feel some restriction of the topic of addiction, the movie allows the artist to explore it in a far more striking way, on a deeper, more honest level (while also, of course, hinting at new music). Together with Setten, he does so by showing real, raw emotion that, no matter whether or not you’re a fan of the music, many of us can relate to. The Melodic Blue experience as a whole feels like an introspection, not only into the struggles of a young man facing trauma and addiction, but also into the creative limits of an artist.
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