clipping. — Change the Channel

JUL 01 2025 · 12:00

clipping. — Change the Channel (2025) Director: Merawi Gerima Era: Cyberpunk Hip-Hop Revival (2025) - Post-horrorcore pivot era for clipping., marking their shift from horror-inflected experimentalism to cyberpunk dystopia; released as a single from Dead Channel Sky (Sub Pop, March 14, 2025) High-value archive object documenting the 2025 cyberpunk hip-hop moment and the creative intersection of Afrofuturist experimental rap and Black independent cinema. The confirmed directorial authorship of Merawi Gerima — a Venice/Slamdance-recognized filmmaker — elevates this beyond a standard promotional video to a short-form work of cultural significance. The quantitative data (136 cuts, 1.17s avg shot, warm saturation-heavy palette) provides a measurable aesthetic fingerprint for the Dead Channel Sky visual identity. Context: Released January 2025 as a lead single from Dead Channel Sky (Sub Pop, March 14, 2025), clipping.'s pivot from horror-rap to cyberpunk marks a deliberate genre migration within experimental hip-hop. The track and video arrive amid a broader cultural resurgence of cyberpunk aesthetics in Black speculative art, building on the Afrofuturist lineage the group has developed across Hugo Award-nominated work. The 'dead channel' metaphor — signal loss, media saturation, surveillance — resonates with 2020s anxieties around information overload, digital alienation, and algorithmic control. Director Merawi Gerima, whose debut feature Residue grappled with urban erasure and displacement through fragmented visual language, brings a formally experimental Black cinematic sensibility that amplifies the track's dystopian urgency. Director notes: Gerima was confirmed as director of the 'Change the Channel' music video prior to the release of clipping.'s album Dead Channel Sky (Sub Pop, March 14, 2025). The video was announced alongside the single release in early 2025. The engagement of a filmmaker with Gerima's background — community-centered, experimentally narrative, steeped in Black cinematic tradition — is thematically coherent with clipping.'s Afrofuturist and cyberpunk conceptual framework for Dead Channel Sky. The video was uploaded to Vimeo (video ID: 1046876320) and YouTube (ID: fwI1FqU_qk0) as the official music video.