Last year, Headie One and Fred Again dropped their GANG mixtape, which included a two-minute interlude titled “Judge Me” featuring FKA Twigs. It would seem the trio had unfinished business with that song, because now they’ve shared a longer, fleshed-out version of the track titled “Don’t Judge Me.”
Fred Again previously said of the original “Judge Me,” “We made a bunch of tracks and some of them made sense being two minutes. I like the way they pace the tape, it kind of slows it down. It’s a breather. Like a macro version of the ‘Told’ lyrics, spacing everything out. I played Twigs ‘Told’ and ‘GANG’ and she was really moved by them and wanted to get involved. I’d made this sketch of pitching Headie’s vocal around that had loads of space and it just worked.”
The track comes with a video as well, and director Emmanuel Adjei offered a statement about the visual titled “The Invisible Oppressor,” writing:
“From someone’s appearance, we are unable to judge whether a person discriminates over color, sex, religion, or gender. The oppressors within the people surrounding us, most often remain invisible until their abuse against others is revealed. This is one of the reasons why, for generations, discrimination is so hard to fight. Who must the victim fight against if it can’t identify the perpetrator?
In this audio-visual document we get to witness artists FKA Twigs and Headie One, amongst other Black British influentials, fighting against invisible forces of judgement and oppression. Having the enormous Victorian-inspired fountain ‘Fons Americanus’ by visual artist Kara Walker – depicting the historical, sorrowful story of slavery and colonization – as our setting, and particularly as the spirit of the film, this important monument creates another layer of depth and meaning to an invisible yet shared history.”
Watch the “Don’t Judge Me” video above and listen to the song below.