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Music

Watch Tunji Ige's Fascinating Video for "Ball Is Life"

The standout track from 'The Love Project' gets a video that's a fully postmodern clash of media.

Tunji Ige has been one of this year's great hip-hop success stories: His album The Love Project, released at the very end of 2014, has quickly solidified its place as a sonically inventive part of the new indie rap canon, and Tunji has had the chance to tour extensively on the festival circuit and elsewhere. Plus, he's an awesome guy (read about our trip record shopping with him).

While "Ball Is Life" wasn't the first song from The Love Project to catch people's attention, it may be the one that's drawn the most attention for its catchy hooks on hooks, searing saxophone, and carefully layered basketball metaphors that touch on both love and race. The video suits the subject matter: It's a postmodern clash of media, with a Bruce Lee quote in the opening sequence, allusions to movie scripts, phone notifications, an acid trip, basketball imagery, color-soaked views of the countryside, and more. At one point Tunji takes off his headphones and the sound cuts out entirely: a fitting pause in a visual experience that seems to be about the ways information comes at us from a hundred different directions.

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A message flashes across the screen at the end as a warped Auto-Tune outro wells up, declaring, "This Concludes the Love Project." Is this the end of a chapter for Tunji? Is there something new on the horizon? Whatever it is, it's dope as hell. Check it out below:

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