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Gabe ’Nandez is nothing if not consistent. For the past several years, he’s been releasing progressively stronger projects with a workmanlike efficiency and a rare modesty for someone operating at his level. The most recent of these, April’s Pangea, found the New York-based P.O.W. Records-signed emcee in peak form, rattling off revelatory bars with the urgency of a brunch order.
This deceptive calm carries into ’Nandez’s new song, “Louis XIV.” The track is textbook hip-hop excellence: Over an unassuming, soul-sampling beat by Argov (the Israeli producer who provided the instrumentals for his last track, “Venus In Mercury,” as well), he spins a tale of royal death in measured, even bars. “I just shot the king / He was in my range / So I aimed,” he raps early on, casually recounting the spontaneous murder of a monarch.
“Louis XIV” comes with a Joel Cameron Bailey visual treatment shot in London’s famous Abney Park cemetery, placing ’Nandez among the graves as he gives his testimony under an overcast sky. Watch the clip above and stream the song below.