If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve likely seen a lot of Wes Anderson. Well, not the director himself (though his new film, Asteroid City, is due in June), but people playfully mimicking his distinctive style. Anderson-esque travel videos, library tours, campus visits, you name it, all brightly colored and super symmetrical and scored to Alexandre Desplat. And now Milwaukee can claim a song-length homage to Anderson: BLAX‘s brightly colored, super symmetrical, and cosmically positive video for his latest single, “Intelligent Beings.”
Shot at one of Milwaukee’s most Wes Anderson-y locations—The Daily Bird, a.k.a. the old Fuel on Center—the “Intelligent Beings” clip finds three different versions of BLAX 1.) ordering coffee with a deadpan expression, 2.) reading W.E.B. Du Bois in the kitchen, and 3.) rocking a Nirvana T-shirt. Also, the Maryland Avenue Montessori tracksuit is perfect.
The Friday release of “Intelligent Beings” was unfortunately inspired by some awful Thursday news: the sudden death of beloved Milwaukee musician, percussionist, and educator Cecilio Negrón Jr. (De La Buena, Kings Go Forth, more).
“I was thinking of waiting a little while longer to upload and release the music video for some reason or another,” BLAX tells us, “and then today I heard the news of my good friend’s passing, which inspired me to action, because we never know if we have tomorrow to get what we may have wanted done today.”
The “Intelligent Beings” video was directed by Dave Miller of Thousand Clicks Media. As for BLAX, the veteran Milwaukee rapper is a year removed from his fantastic 2022 record Angeline, which contained the especially fantastic “A Rollerskating Jam Called Liberation.”
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