Somewhere between cloud rap, vaporwave, and nerd-hop resides the idiosyncratic Canadian rapper Young Braised (real name: Jaymes Bowman), one of the more interesting and unusual acts to put out a cassette on the Vancouver based 1080p label, entitled Japanese Tendencies. In the tongue-in-cheek video for “Life is Good”, shot by William Wilkinson, Young Braised presents his own vision of chilling with his homies.
Young Braised injects the video with a sense of humor, stabbing at Internet visual aesthetic, especially the Tumblr blogs, combining beautiful scenery (like Braised dancing on the rocky sea shore) with kitschy .gifs referring to cannabis use, terribly cheap visual effects, posing next to Porsche 911 with Toyota keys and rolling through the hood on a Segway in a helmet (a reference to Weird Al Yankovic’s “White and Nerdy?”), and, last, but not least, the constant Nike logo fetishism, references to popular 90’s celebrities and “advertising” energy drinks.
But the work of Young Braised doesn’t end with the video — there’s also something for the more fashion-savvy fans. Together with the Japanese-Canadain streetwear label MMVIII, he created a collaborative t-shirt with a lovely minimalistic/normcore design. You can buy it here.
• Young Braised: http://www.youngbraised.com
• 1080p Collection: http://1080pcollection.net
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