James Blake and Slowthai Contemplate Mortality in ‘Funeral’ Video
James Blake updated Friends That Break Your Heart album cut “Funeral” with a feature from U.K. rapper Slowthai and a very morose music video.
The duo play into the melancholy of the song’s metaphoric theme of attending your own wake — while begging to not be forgotten — with black-and-white aerial footage of a funeral procession.
For the new version of the track, Blake sacrifices his original second verse, where he laments “I would livе in the leaves that crunch undеr your feet/I wanna be heard if I can’t be seen” for a hyper-specific list of comparisons from Slowthai.
“I live in the shadows of, mmm, under the loose leaves/I spread my wings, I got a nose bleed,” he mourns. “I been the dust on top of trophies, the rust that makes it homely/The crust that no one wants, I was forgotten, I’ve gone moldy.”
The song was originally produced and written by Blake, who told Apple Music: “This song is all me, done on a very sunny but slightly miserable day. I was thinking about how it feels not to be heard, and to worry that people have given up on you.”
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Blake and Slowthai will perform the “Funeral” remix Monday night on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
