Kelela Becomes a Sim in the 'Frontline' Video

Kelela’s new CGI video for “Frontline,” which premiered on Insecure and was among several highlights on her 2017 album Take Me Apart, exists just at the edge of uncanny valley. Told via Sims-inspired animation, the action is broad like a silent movie, if the silent movie featured an R&B goddess cruising in a convertible and lighting up a blunt. “It’s about leaving your ex with the wind in your hair while acknowledging a curiously complex feeling of pain that he has left you for a white woman,” is how Kelela summarized the plot to Rolling Stone.

Kelela conceptualized the clip with Mischa Notcutt, and Claudia Matè did the animation and effects. All of the videos for Take Me Apart songs have been radically different—there was the ‘90s throwback (“LMK”), the one where Kelela had sex with her hair (“Blue Light”), and now this clip. Her thirst for adventure, it seems, is unquenchable.