About the project

To celebrate the return of GoldLink with his 2nd studio album Diaspora, we were tasked to creative direct the entire world in which his music resides. The core concept was an alternate reality that all black peoples reside after they pass from this reality – a haven trapped in the early 2000s, in which they become vampires of the diaspora. Our ambition was to reinvent vampire tropes & subvert eurocentric ideals – the black vampire. All the visuals revolve around cultural references to the black diaspora, such as using the Pan-African colors of red/yellow/gold as the palette and using the owl as the animal symbol (instead of the bat). We took this branding concept across all the cover art with two singles and LP, as well as the IFFY FM Beats 1 radio identity. We also built out an interactive website that featured a 3D blood moon, evoking a contemporary take on a GeoCities site. We took Diaspora into the real world with the Zulu Screams music video, directed by Meji Alabi – which gave fans the first insight into our beautifully dark world with an afrobeat rave. Then we directed GoldLink’s performance with Maleek Berry on Jimmy Fallon and took Diaspora on tour with Tyler the Creator & Jaden Smith for Tyler’s IGOR run, hitting arenas such as Madison Square Garden and Merriweather Post Pavilion.