Halifax Hip Hop artist, producer and videographer Mitchell Paquette, aka CHELL, has released a music video for his new song ‘T.M.I’. Set to appear on his impending album, the song expresses CHELL’s frustrations with a problem that’s certainly not a new, but has become far more pervasive in the last half century, namely the saturation of media, dominated by politics, fear-mongering, and the ever-present threat of war.
The video was directed and edited by Paquette himself with the help of fellow friends Bryan Underwood and Jaclyn Buell in the filming process.
“You’ll hear a classic excerpt from the 1976 film ‘Network’, which really ties the song’s tone all together,” says Paquette. “The tone, of course, being how we should be situationally aware and conscious of the potential for being susceptible to predictive programming and subliminal messaging, while we consume our information through general media outlets.”
Paquette hammers home his heavily auto-tuned message with visuals evoking the daily news cycle. CHELL’s video is filled with references to war, the (literal) corruption of media, and the appearance of a phrase that has taken on a dangerous double-meaning: “fake news”.
Shot in an Ontario aircraft boneyard, the video attempts to layer on an extra sense of foreboding with a touch of post-apocalyptic panache.
“The message is conveyed best by the outro which is a continuation of the excerpt from ‘Network’,” says Paquette referring to Peter Finch’s portrayal of unhinged news anchor Howard Beale an his call to action:
“I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a human being, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!'”
“I think the video turned out well,” says Paquette, “I look forward to sharpening my skills for future projects.”
The song will be appearing as part of CHELL’s new 7 track album, POETRAP, which is set to release early February.