Riz Ahmed Drops Video for New Song “Mogambo”
The video is directed by New York-based filmmaker Bassam Tariq.
Riz Ahmed — aka Riz MC — shares a new single titled “Mogambo.” The Redinho-produced record is also accompanied by a music video, which is directed by New York-based filmmaker Bassam Tariq. Riz is as ferocious as ever as he proclaims to those who “wanna kill us” that we aren’t going anywhere.
“Mogambo” takes inspiration from the super villain in the classic 1987 Bollywood movie Mr. India, which revolves around a secret formula which renders people invisible – an apt metaphor, in Riz’s words, for the rising movement to try and make immigrants and dissidents vanish.
Bassam Tariq, while shooting in Pakistan, describes how the video came alive:
Our initial idea was a glamorized and intentionally composed video that challenged ideas of masculinity but after looking back at footage Riz and I shot in Pakistan, we realized that there is a raw energy that we can never recreate. So we decided to make the footage work and embrace the pedestrian nature of it. It’s tough for my ego to put something out that feels rough around the edges but throughout the edit, the footage kept telling me that we are enough to keep viewers interested. We don’t need to be flashy to have people like us. We are perfectly imperfect – shaky compositions and soft focus and all.
In 2016, Ahmed shared his Englistan mixtape plus combined with rapper Heems and producer Redinho to form the Swet Shop Boys to drop their debut LP Cashmere later that year and Sufi La EP in 2017.
Outside of music, Riz Ahmed won an Emmy for Lead Actor in a Limited Series for his role as Nasir “Naz” Khan in HBO’s The Night Of. Ahmed is also starring in the upcoming Venom film, out this Friday.
