Grimes ft. Blood Diamonds – Go
2014 · Directed by Roco-Prime (Claire Boucher & Mac Boucher)
125K Likes
Best comments
1.“I'm glad Rihanna rejected this song. I prefer Grimes' vocals anyway. [Edit: Grimes wrote it and offered it to Rihanna, you goons.]”
More comments
- 2.“This confirms that in medieval days, women wore Adidas slippers.”
- 3.“My 8-year-old won't let me sing along when we're listening to Grimes in the car. She looks out the window all serious and says, 'Mom, please, this is listening-and-thinking music. Sorry, buuuut you're ruining it.'”
The story
Grimes wrote Go for Rihanna. Rihanna passed. So Grimes kept it, made it with Vancouver producer Blood Diamonds (Mike Tucker) and gave it away free in June 2014 as a summer jam to tide fans over while her album dragged on. It was a hard left turn. The Fader heard a vampiric harpsichord opening that builds into a punishing dubstep climax and called it her first real club track. Some fans hated the pop direction.
For the video she co-directed with her brother Mac under the name Roco-Prime, and also handled concept, art direction, styling, editing and color herself. It's her take on Dante's Inferno, with Grimes as Dante and Blood Diamonds as Virgil, the two moving through the circles of hell. It opens with screenwriter David Hayter reading from Inferno over dancers in a dark red room. They shot in California, including the Salton Sea, which she called an apocalyptic wasteland.
Rolling Stone clocked her swinging a massive sword in Adidas flip-flops, black-lit fish-eye rave scenes that echo Hype Williams' late-'90s hip-hop videos, and a bullet-holed hallway borrowed from Korn's Freak on a Leash. She also named X-Men and Dune as influences. Nine circles of hell, one pair of flip-flops.
