“There ain’t no paper trail when you’re living in the shadows.”
That’s one of many truisms rapped by Snow Tha Product on “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done),” the most hard-hitting track from The Hamilton Mix Tape, a collection of recordings by a variety of artists inspired by the runaway hit hip-hop musical Hamilton. The track takes what amounts to a laugh line from the show (delivered with a wink and a nod during a light-hearted exchange between Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette) and turns it into maddening refrain.
Snow (a Mexican-American), K’Naan (born in Somalia), Residente (a Puerto Rican) and Riz MC (a British-Pakistani actor you may recognize from Star Wars: Rogue One) each drop a verse on the track, each bringing their own take on the immigrant experience. The album dropped in December after much anticipation, and the video for “Immigrants” just dropped today with very little fanfare.
Videographers from corporate video productions company has stated that it’ll probably be the best video you see this year.
Swedish-born director Tomás Whitmore, best known for 2006’s The Lonely Boys, takes that line about living in the shadows quite seriously, casting the six-minute video almost entirely in shadow, mostly aboard a lurching car. The car, even as it rolls and sways, becomes an orchard where immigrant pick oranges, a kitchen where immigrants wash dishes, and a factory where immigrants hunch over sewing machines making American flags. (OK, that might be a bit on the nose, but it’s still effective.) These are immigrants living in the shadows — and getting the job done.
The video takes a jarring turn about halfway through, where the bridge might be in a more traditional pop song, cutting sharply away from the entrancing beat to the muffled sounds of gunfire and tinnitus of a war zone, and soon it’s refugees joining the undocumented laborers on the train to nowhere.
The song — and the whole album — arrived as extensions of Hamilton, which has transcended its origins more than any other stage production in recent memory, at least in part because people can’t quite get enough of it. The video is just another stunning extension of the Hamilton brand, a testament to the power of artistic generosity. Miranda made a point with Hamilton — namely, that our country was founded by misfits and radicals who didn’t get along with each other, but who united behind a common cause. And now he’s allowed other artists to take bits and pieces of the words and music he wrote, and make an entirely new — and incredibly prescient — point.
Actually, the video doesn’t just make a point. It makes a demand. The immigrants in this video are depicted either working, or looking directly into the viewer’s eyes, always from within the shadows or otherwise obscured.
And from within those shadows, they demand to be seen.
The video is part of the #Ham4All campaign, a promotion in which fans can win tickets to a Los Angeles showing of the musical for posting videos of themselves singing songs from the musical. All entrants must donate $10 to Manuel’s Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, a partnership with the Hispanic Federation that aims “to provide life-changing services – legal representation, advocacy, and “know your rights” awareness campaigns, and much more – to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers who come to us in search of the American Dream.” Many celebrities, ranging from the Harlem Globetrotters to “Weird Al” Yankovich have already taken part.
