Jessie Reyez Tells Us The 'Surreal' Meaning Of New 'Imported' Video With 6LACK

"I've been locked in the studio with pizza and whiskey," Jessie Reyez deadpans. "It's good and it's painful. It's long nights and no sleep. Once it's out, I'll feel better."


She's discussing the status of her debut album: one of the year's most hotly anticipated releases, as well as an assignment almost three years in the making. Now, she's selecting the tracklist from "hundreds" of songs — "It's hell, it's so hard," she admitted — however she already has one picked out. Released this week, it's her 6LACK-featuring remix of "Imported," from her good 2018 EP, Being Human in Public.


"You don't really know what songs are going to touch people, nevertheless I remember a day soon after releasing the original song, I did a show and each person was singing it," she mentioned of the slow-burning number. "It was angry cool that people only had a day to learn the song also it hit them already, you know? So have the ability to put somebody as talented as 6LACK on it and have the ability to give the song a new life, is a sick opportunity."


Reyez and 6LACK's easygoing chemistry is all over the potent, sharp-tongued track's new video, released on Wednesday (April 10) and directed by Zac Facts. In the vid — which you could visualize all day on mtvU and MTV Live — the two artists brood around an empty apartment, however their physical proximity to each other can't conceal their emotional distance.


"We wanted it to be this surreal feeling; the concept of someone being out of your life nevertheless they're still stuck in your head," Reyez explained. "Someone can be miles away, although if they're in your heart that shows they're locked in your head, also. No matter how much you attempt to get away from somebody, they're there."


You can visualize that tension any time Reyez and 6LACK are sitting in the same room, their backs turned away from each other. You visualize it whenever 6LACK is cruising around L.A., Seeing Reyez everywhere he looks (she assured us, by the way, that he is a "pretty damn good" driver). And also you visualize it in the final shot, whenever he lays down next to her, only for both of these to look away within seconds.


"To me, it's someone who's right beside you nevertheless they're not," Reyez mentioned of that last scene. "They're sitting beside you in your head. It's that disconnect; it's that inability have the ability to communicate with somebody because they are a figment of your imagination, locked indoors your head. It could feel like they're right beside you, nevertheless there's a wall."


That onscreen heaviness is, thankfully, the entire opposite of Reyez and 6LACK's real-life dynamic. The two had crossed paths at various festivals over the years, and any time the possibility to work with each other came up, the Toronto singer mentioned they were an organic fit. She explained, "I think maybe because I strive to be as straightforward as possible in my music, and I feel like he's similar in that regard. I think that for us both have the ability to put our truth forward like that, is what makes us mesh so well. And working with him is such a breeze; that guy is so chill, he's so zen, which just made it easy."


If only finalizing that tracklist couple be as simple.