“Is this Nigeria?”
That was the first question a friend asked me when they saw the visualizer for Suté Iwar and Ray the Boffin’s Love and Rebellion. It was a simple question, but for me, it was loaded with meaning. Growing up on MTV and Channel O, the “high-gloss” videos were usually exported from South Africa or the US, while local visuals often felt ghetto by default.
So, yes, it is Nigeria – but a version of it dreamed up by Suté Iwar.
Shooting for Suté Iwar – One of Alté’s Pioneers
Suté is one of the pioneers of the Nigerian alternative scene, blending R&B, Rap, and Electronic textures with Afrobeats and other genres. Like Ray’s production,Suté’s work doesn’t fit in a neat box, so the visuals couldn’t either.
We shot this during my time in Abuja in 2025. The city itself became a massive factor in the production. Unlike the frenzied energy of Lagos – where filming on the street often means navigating extortion or chaos from street boys (omo onile) – Abuja offered us a blank canvas. It was quiet. We had the freedom to compose shots without looking over our shoulders.
But Abuja offered a different challenge: The Sun. The Northern Nigerian sun is harsh and unforgiving. To combat this, we had to push the technical limits of my trusty Canon 90D, shooting at extremely low ISOs to tame the light while maintaining the deep blacks and muted highlights of the “film look” we were chasing.
Serendipity and the “Windows Explorer” Solution
When I sat down to edit, I realized we had a problem: We only had about 30 seconds of “perfect” performance footage. The rest was B-roll, bloopers, and BTS.
A traditional editor might have seen this as a lack of material. I saw it as a creative challenge.
As I was organizing the files, I thought: “Wouldn’t it be cool if all these videos played at once?”
That became the central creative concept. I built a composition that mimicked a 3×3 grid in a file explorer – indeed the background of the video is a digitally altered version of my file explorer. I designed a digital cursor to “click” through the clips, simulating a user browsing through memories. This structure allowed us to use the “bloopers” not as mistakes, but as files in a folder – the actual raw, authentic glimpses of the artists.
Collaboration will save the world
The result is a meta-narrative. It breaks the fourth wall, showing the viewer the “files” of the music video rather than just the video itself.
More importantly, this project reinforced a core belief of mine: You don’t always need a massive crew to build a world. In the spirit of true collaboration, an artist and a filmmaker can align on a vision, and with just one camera and a bit of sideways thinking, create something that feels larger than the sum of its parts.
Special thanks to Ajay Abalaka, Joshua and Etim for their help and assistance throughout the project. Watch Love and Rebellion by Suté Iwar and Ray the Boffin on Youtube.