Yungeen Ace presenting the Official Music Video for, ‘So Long’
A wounded man slumps against a white wall on a city street. Itβs late at night, and thereβs nobody on the road, and no one within earshot to help him as he bleeds. With an infernal cackle, another man (or perhaps it only seems to be a man) descends to the sidewalk from the skies. As the wounded man begins to lose consciousness, the second man approaches him and whispers something malicious. The first man in this nightmare scene is Jacksonville rapper and singer Yungeen Ace. The second man could be the Grim Reaper, or a representative of a malevolent, semi-human race, or just a figment of the starβs imagination β a projection made amid his delirium and pain.
If you think this scene from βSo Long,β the latest video from Jacksonville, Floridaβs Yungeen Ace, is just a metaphor, then you donβt know anything about the rapperβs life, or what heβs gone through. No, he hasnβt gone toe to toe with a physical manifestation of Death, but heβs taken the punches and beaten the odds, and heβs lived to sing and rap about it. Less than a year ago, the vocalist took eight bullets while shielding his friends from an assailant. That night, Yungeen Ace watched three members of his crew die in front of him. Heβs lost family members, faced incarceration, and felt the sting of poverty and hunger β in short, heβs gone through more hardship in his 21 years than most people do in a lifetime.
Now that heβs through it, heβs channeling all of his pain, his rage, his hope, and his survivorβs exuberance into uncompromising songs that make his struggles β and his victories β manifest for his listeners. Life Iβm Livin, his 2018 mixtape, firmly established him as one of the most talented young rappers in the crowded Florida rap game: a vocalist with a distinctive approach and an even more remarkable story to tell. βSo Longβ is both the sweetest and the meanest record heβs ever cut β itβs a hip-hop beat with roots deep in Southern blues and gospel, and itβs graced by a Yungeen Ace performance thatβs mesmerizing in its intensity.
Christian Breslauerβs clip for βSo Longβ captures all the brutality and all the beauty of Yungeen Aceβs music. We get plenty of footage of the rapper and singer in the boxing ring, trading blows with a beast of a man egged on by the demonic figure we meet in the videoβs first minutes. Yungeen Ace takes a beating and hits the canvas β but he doesnβt stay down. In the end, itβs his own flurry of blows that carries the day. But for how long?
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