What lies beyond the edge? Hiro Murai's steady, considered camera seems to beg this simple, harrowing question as it wanders like molasses through an eerie and otherworldly suburban neighbourhood in his video for Earl Sweatshirt's Hive (and his follow-up to the Chum video), illuminating curious scenes with a pointed spotlight. It begins to feel as though we're in the suburban ocean deep, bearing witness to things no human was ever meant to see. 

This practice of the unexpected is quickly becoming the staple, both audibly and visually, for an emerging group of young MCs and producers out of LA. Most notably, the creative tornado that is Odd Future, and all of its affiliated artists. 

With most music, a very clear lineage can usually be drawn in the evolution of a style or musical movement. However, for Earl Sweatshirt and his contemporaries, it's not so much a case of wearing influences on their sleeves, but more like brazenly not wearing sleeves at all. Their musical aesthetic, and the visual themes they gravitate towards, aren't weighed down by pandering to the audience or flipping through a cultural rulebook to the This Is How Hip-Hop Should Look and Sound Like section.

That being the case, Earl Sweatshirt couldn't have found a better director than Hiro Murai, with his visually adventurous pedigree, to create a video that sinks its gnarled teeth into the viewer as much as 'Hive' does. What lies beyond the edge? There may not be one.

The idea was to take what we did for Chum and expand on it. Like the last one, we wanted to take a classic Hip Hop video structure and put a twist on it. For this one, I wanted to do a bizarro version of grimy posse-cut videos like Wu Tang's "Protect Ya Neck" where rappers take turn performing while surrounded by faceless mobs of people.