Just over one month ago, New York-raised but Detroit, Michigan-famed rapper Quelle Chris dropped his latest LP, Guns (embedded below). The record is his sixth solo album to date, although including collaborations and production credits, Chris has more than two dozen projects under his belt. This latest Mello Music Group effort is packed with a barrage of tracks surrounding our relationships with firearms and our community’s symptoms and products of paranoia. The record is a whirlwind of direct responses to modern day outer anxieties. With features by Mach-Hommy, Denmark Vessey, Bilal Salaam, and (Chris’ wife and 2018 album collaborator) Jean Grae, Guns is a solid effort by a respected double-threat who has many years of experience behind him.

Guns closes out with Chris pondering the gravity of his own work, asking listeners: “Will you remember me?” Today, the album’s final track, “WYRM,” gets the music video treatment from director Grégoire Verbeke depicting Quelle Chris’ entire being in the present, and tinting it through a hint of nostalgia and visual introspect. Notably, this visual was shot on 8mm Kodak film adding to this retro effect.

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“So many of my memories are collections of collages from home videos, photo books and boxes of developed pictures” Quelle said in a statement to Ambrosia For Heads. “The lucky few who have escaped the fate of moments lost in disposable cameras; VHS and minicam tapes. Orphans of history without a home. This particular memory was captured on a Canon 814XL camera and shot with Kodak Super8. Through the lens of Grégoire Verbeke on a lovely afternoon in Brussels. A moment trapped in time. Ageless—even as we fade. Will you remember?”

The song’s warm piano-loop and boom-bap drum pattern provides a platform for Chris to self-reflect via journal entry: “I woke up at five in the morning, wondered, ‘Why?’, When every breath is just a step to death / Every ghost, another second best, When I die, will I survive, or will I fade until there’s nothin’ left? / A second guess before I light up, an orange and white up, but I’m pressed / ‘Til the stress takes another 0-and-1 lead / Ain’t been the same since since the 2B let it bleed through me / So I joined the 27 entertainer heaven / And live it up real proper, king sh*t, ’til they dead him.” At a time when attention spans are often ephemeral, one of the 2010s most original and influential Hip-Hop artists asks an important question in this track.

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Press photograph by Vashni Korin provided by Mello Music Group.

#BonusBeat: Stream Quelle Chris’ Guns album: