Double GRAMMY® Award-winner Fantastic Negrito has just released the new video for ‘How Long?’, the latest track to be taken from the forthcoming new album, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND YET?, which is out August 14th via Cooking Vinyl/Blackball Universe.
The track confronts those behind school shootings, police brutality and other acts of senseless violence. Negrito holds a mirror up to society at large and asks “why have people become disconnected from humanity, and how has our current culture become a fertile environment for this behavior?”
Negrito has now released a stark companion video featuring closeups of his face, directed by Isaiah Frazier. This is not a song that observes and comments from topographical distances. This is a song in the trenches. This is a song that has seen it, lived it. This is a song that can’t cry anymore.
Negrito says, “When I was writing ‘How Long?’ I was actually talking to the shooter – a very familiar subject in American society. We all know who the shooter is. He’s isolated, scared, maybe he feels betrayed, and to hide his fear, he consumes images and media that make him feel powerful.
“If I had the chance, I would tell the shooter he’s not in it alone. I would tell him I know despair. I would confess to him all of the horrible things I have done in my life. All of the darkness, the foster homes, the sexual predators, my past criminal activity. I’ve hurt a lot of people. I ran away from home when I was 12 years old. I saw my 14 year old brother with his head blown open, and I helped my mother clean the blood off the floor. I watched my 16 year old cousin get buried in a coffin. My best friend was murdered in a barber shop here in the liberal, peace-loving Bay Area. I survived a three week coma. I lost my playing hand, and I felt like everything was over. But it wasn’t.
“Hopefully being able to survive those things and share them with people in despair can help ease all the pain.”