HipHopDX Premiere: Indie rapper Astronautalis and Fake Four, Inc. founder Ceschi Ramos have pieced together a new track titled “Leave It All Behind,” a sparse, post-apocalyptic story over haunting production by South Dakota beatsmith Doze Beats, which oozes unparalleled creativity and dark, spoken-word style verses. While it’s not traditional Hip Hop by any means, Ramos believes it’s an important piece of music that correlates with everything currently going on in the world.
“It’s a fitting time to be talking about worlds changing, unraveling, ending,” Ramos tells HipHopDX. “Astronautalis and I imagined something of a future dust bowl type apocalypse. Where do we run when the only world we’ve ever known has been burnt to dust? What do we put faith in? What will actually save us? Emma Goldman theories? Bible thumpers holding snakes? I think this is a story about putting faith in each other when there’s nothing else to hang onto.”
Created by French animator Wasaru, the visual tells the story of one man who traverses the lawless husk of a future society to seek retribution. Together with his canine companion, he makes his way across a graveyard of a city encountering the sick and dying, a church empty but beset with the phantoms of a Pentecostal congregation, and finally a confrontation with a crow-headed criminal organization. The limited color pallet of the video underscores the bleakness of this landscape. While the track both haunting and thoughtful provokes the audience to wrestle with the same question the solider faces on his journey— what is faith and belief in a world where “there ain’t no answer, there ain’t no design?”
Watch the video above.
