Jorja Smith 'On Your Own' by Rashid Babiker

This superb video for Jorja Smith presents the artist and her song On Your Own inside a beautifully designed picture book, discovered in a young woman's bedroom, that comes to life.

Rashid Babiker brings different visual elements - design, photography, and even cutout animation - that work so well together to elevate not only a delightfully cool image of Jorja Smith but serves to make the song more hypotic, more alluring.

Very good indeed, and on this basis, Rashid Babiker is a real one to watch.

RASHID BABIKER:

"Before Jorja even asked me to come up with a concept for On Your Own, as a thought experiment I was imagining books, the hardback clothbound ones, being retrofitted into interactive photobooks, or video books sometime in the future when print is in the terminal stages of obsolescence. I imagined them to be like those 1940’s gramophones that bare the Dolby digital insignia and have Bluetooth connectivity but aren’t gramophones; the ones that visitors mistake for vinyl players, the same visitors that mistake you for being cold-hearted enough to correct them.

"To stage it in a way fitting for the song I channelled imagined-nostalgia from the perspective of a girl, a fan of Jorja, who’s living in an intentionally anachronistic world where these videobooks exist and cassettes are the new, old vinyl of today. Even with the nondescript time period, from the year markings in the book you can determine the book is from Jorja’s “lost & found” period and the world is set a bit further into the future.

"The whole thing works as a music video by having a great song firstly, Jorja always makes it easy in that respect, interesting content on the pages (just like a good book), thematic parallels to the lyrics, and choreographed page turns that act as cuts. But then it’s a real jigsaw puzzle piecing everything together!”