Brooklyn hip-hop group Flatbush Zombies have released a new single and video called “Afterlife,” which was produced by James Blake. The track comes after the rap trio’s recent critically-lauded EP, now, more than ever.

As for “Afterlife” itself, the track sees rappers Meechy Darko, Zombie Juice and Erick Arc Elliott provide their signature free-flowing rhymes over Blake’s melodic beats with some interesting x-ray technology leveraged by director Arnoud Bresson for the video.

Discussing how his team achieved the x-ray visuals, Bresson says, “Today, there is no technology that x-ray films a living being without endangering it, so we worked hand in hand with a post-production company to develop a technical device that would allow us to achieve a similar effect. We used multi-camera tracking, recorded the positions and movements of our characters to extract and apply to our 3D compositions. It took four months of work to find the perfect style.”

Flatbush Zombies belong to the East Coast hip-hop supergroup Beast Coast, which includes fellow Brooklyn-based rap groups The Underachievers and Pro Era. After garnering much acclaim and fan following through their various mix-tapes and array of notable live performances, the trio released their debut album 3001: A Laced Odyssey in 2016.

The group released two singles from the album including “Bounce” and “This Is It.” The album ultimately received much critical praise, receiving an average score of 80 from Metacritic. After selling 28,000 albums in its first week of release, the record reached number 10 on the US Billboard 200 chart.

In 2018, the group released their second studio effort, Vacation in Hell. The album launched a worldwide tour which included an opening stop at that year’s Coachella Music Festival in California. Their most recent effort, now, more than ever, was released in the wake of the global protests around the death of George Floyd. The EP reached 168 on the Billboard 200.

Photo credit: Sharon Alagna