Kalup and Franco are a real music duo, with a real EP, Turn It Up, coming in two weeks that will be released on a real person’s real record label. So why not a real music video to go along with all that? Here, then, is the clip for perseverance anthem “Rising,†the first official single from Turn It Up. It’s unclear what James Franco has added, musically speaking; most of the track is Linzy cooing softly over some dreamy synths and a devastatingly sexy bass line. He dominates the video, too, with Franco relegated to spectral background presence. Then again, the end credits do read “additional footage by Rabbit Bandini Productions and James Franco.†(Maybe this explains the quote Franco gave us at amFAR party a few weeks ago: “That’s not my EP. Kalup Linzy is doing the EP, I think I, like, do some spoken word on it, but that is not my EP.â€) As for the footage itself, it is trippy and abstract and purposefully unfinished in exactly the kind of way you’d expect. That is: Despite the fact that this is a low-budget parody of an indie R&B track that features the involvement of a prominent movie star, there is nothing particularly interesting here. Honestly, though, the song? Not half bad! [Pitchfork]
