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Music

Riz Ahmed and Heems Target Racial Profiling in the New Swet Shop Boys Video

"A lifetime of traveling in brown skin and with a Muslim name have taught Riz Ahmed to expect the indignity of being racially profiled."

It's always been pretty hard to make music that truly makes you think while also sounding ostensibly incredible. Obviously, Kendrick Lamar has made a near perfect career out of it, but many artists who fly too close to the flame of consciousness often end up with a record that is only purchased by weed dealers who wear hemp trousers and post articles about chemtrails on Facebook.

Enter Swet Shop Boys, who have crafted a infectious middle-ground whereby their songs are simultaneously stone-wall rap bangers and vital slabs of social commentary. The duo – formed of Riz Ahmed (very famous actor man from Four Lions, Nightcrawler and The Night Of) and Heems (one half of the subversive wit that made Das Racist so damn great) – released a video for their single "T5" via Fader last night, and, like the song, it focuses on the paranoid and prejudice experience of being racially profiled at airport that so many people of colour experience every time they travel. Except it does all that with humour and punch, over a thumping Redinho beat.

Watch the full video below, and get their album release date (Cashmere, Oct 14) added into your iCal immediately.