Video Premiere: Amenta Abioto – “Plant It”

There’s something special happening in Portland. Music is getting weird, in such a good way. At the forefront, experimental soulful hip-hop luminary Amenta Abioto is pushing genre boundaries in all the right directions, pulling inspiration from her ancestors, nature, space and beyond.

Having built notoriety around mostly improvised live sets with an affinity for her looping machine, Abioto hasn’t had much in the way of recorded material available for fans to digest, aside from a highly experimental collection of “improv and theater” on 2013’s Opening Flower Hymns. But with a new album on the way, and teamed up with filmmaker Alberta Poon and producer Sarah Baker of Boogie Buffet Productions (The Get Down and The Hustle)–and a stellar production crew to boot (including Vaughn Kimmons of Tribe Mars and Brown Calculus)–the team manifested an a gorgeous audio visual experience that truly brings to life the energy and vibrancy of Abioto’s music, specifically to her new single “Plant It”. Watch below.

On her intentions and for the song, Abioto recounts “”Plant It” is an ode to Earth. It’s an exploration of nature and the ways in which it communicates its needs and messages in personal and collective dreams. The song is celebrating the nurturance of ideas through the practice of affirmations, visualizations, prayer, and spells.”

On the inspiration behind the music video, director Alberta Poon tells ELEVEN “I had these abstract dreamy visuals in my head and I knew exactly how I would approach capturing these moments playing with light and cinematography, but I needed more pieces of the puzzle in place. It wasn’t until I met up with Sarah Baker that those ideas started taking shape. Sarah introduced me to Amenta and I knew she was the perfect artist to make these ideas come to life.”